The Kennedy Center opens a different and exciting new work this week with the high-power dance extravaganza, Message in a Bottle. I have a vast background in theatre and performing arts and it’s rare when an offering comes through the national tour circuit that I am not at least familiar with. But that can be a blessing when I enter a production with a blank slate and no preconceptions of what it can or should be. Last night was one of those theatrical gifts. Message in a Bottle is a British import from acclaimed dance company Sadler’s Wells and Universal Music UK. The brainchild of Sadler’s associate artist, acclaimed choreographer and five-time Olivier nominee Kate Prince, who, inspired by the iconic song catalog of 17-time Grammy legend Sting, creates a visually stunning piece of dance artistry featuring a multitude of contemporary dance styles.
photo courtesy of Helen Maybanks
Prince also has a multitude of TV choreography credits including Strictly Come Dancing, Top of the Pops, Dance Fever, and the global sensation So You Think You Can Dance, and her influences there are obvious. Considering that context, this experience feels like an engrossing all-star “Sting Night” installment of SYTYCD. Employing a multi-talented cast well-versed in all aspects of modern dance, she features everything from modern to hip hop to lyrical to street with even a touch of well-placed, impressive old school Electric Boogaloo-reminiscent breakdancing. Each lead character has a particular dance language and not only is Prince a master choreographer playing to those strengths in her vision for the evening, but she is also a master storyteller using her versatile cast to tell a very modern story of disaster, loss, and redemption.
photo courtesy of Lynn Theisen
Prince capitalizes on the even-then exotic sound of Sting’s iconic sound, settling into a desert theme that runs through several of his hits (“Desert Rose”, “Fields of Gold”, “Inshallah”) and conceives a story of a happy family: father Quest (Nestor Garcia), mother Gaia (Daniella Selwood), elder son Leto (Lukas MacFarlane), younger son Mati (Deavion Brown), and daughter Tana (Natasha), who live a quiet content life in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. But after a particularly happy day when Leto and his beloved Roxanne (Serena McCall) are wed (“Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”/”Fields of Gold”), the city comes under siege from a warring nation (“King of Pain”). The family is taken captive and separated. Amidst their brutal treatment, Tana and Rozanne are among a group of women who are victims of wartime sexual violence. The first act falls ends in total chaos with the title song and it’s haunting lyrics, “Rescue me before I fall into despair…I’ll send an S.O.S. to the world.
photo courtesy of Helen Maybanks
In the second act, the three siblings are released separately in a new land and go on individual explorations to rediscover who they are in this new time, resulting in many contrasting beautiful and meaningful dances. Now outside their roles in their family and their culture, the three each venture into new territory. Tana, after surviving the war crimes, discovers the idyllic pleasures of a commune where she can be herself and grow without a man, among a group of gentle and supportive new friends (“Walking on the Moon”). Mati, upon release, takes to the city night life and finds himself exploring a new gay lifestyle (“Englishman in New York”), which would in most instances be illegal in his homeland. Leto is fixated on finding his lost bride in the most mesmerizing segment of the piece, tracking her from his nightmares (“The Bed’s Too Big Without You”) to a seedy red light district where he finds and attempts to rescue her from a hellish life of addiction and prostitution (“Roxanne”, of course).
photo courtesy of Helen Maybanks
Prince excels not only as a director but as a storyteller, using her brilliant artists as her medium. She has also assembled an equally amazing canvas upon which to tell her story. Set Designer Ben Stones employs a minimalist effect with screens and scrims in the first act, where Video Designer Andrzej Goulding paints them with magnificent projections of atmospheric effects like rain, sandstorms, shadows, even “the little black spot on the sun today” referred to in “King of Pain”. In the second act a versatile neon box serves as everything from prison cells to dance clubs to porn houses, mostly for Prince’s athletic cast to use as gymnastic equipment in the demanding routines.
photo courtesy of Lynn Theisen
Lighting Designer Natasha Chivers adds multiple dimensions of atmosphere with her exhilarating lighting, a variety of colorful lights and shadows that wash over the stage. Costume designer Anna Fleischle provides an array of flowing dancewear that enhances and echoes Prince’s emotional movements, starting in pretty pastels in happier times, trading them into stark sand and black as the prisoners and the guards, and each of the siblings is provided a new custom color, more saturated and complex, when released to tell their stories of personal growth from there out.
photo courtesy of Lynn Theisen
More importantly than usual, the music is integral and on tracks it could be a dicey situation. But Music Supervisor Alex Lacamoire provides dazzling new arrangements produced by Martin Terefe and Mixed by Oskar Winberg that give Prince the ultimate palette to work with (vocals predominately by the legendary composer himself with guest artists Beverley Knight, Lynval Golding, Claudia Georgette, Shaneeka Simon, and Christella Litras when female voices are required to tell the story). This team seamlessly blends the music we’re used to hearing with the dynamics of the music Prince needs to tell her story.
photo courtesy of Helen Maybanks
I cannot praise the dancers enough. The incredibly deep and strong ensemble (David Cottle, Dylan Mayoral, Harrison Dowzell, Ajani Johnson-Goffe, Oliver Andrews, Hannah Sandilands, Megan Ingram, and Nethra Manon) are all equally potent as the leads in every form of dance vocabulary Prince asks of them and execute their movement with the utmost technique and athleticism. The jumps and lifts and throws in particular are all fascinating to watch the limits to which the human body can excel when trained and called upon.
photo courtesy of Lynn Theisen
Her ability to dissect Sting’s catalog and pair the numbers up with the dark, painful story she is telling may shock a few 80s babies who grew up thinking his music, especially with the Police, was standard pop radio. But Sting’s music was always darker and more brooding than it seemed when explored beyond the surface (if I attended one more 80s wedding where the happy couple selected “I’ll Be Watching You” as their first dance, oblivious to the fact that the singer isn’t a smitten lover but a psychopathic stalker…). The e-program gives sample lyrics to help integrate them into the story, and every last one is dark as hell, even the seemingly simplistic “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da”. Sting was complicated long before he entered his new age tantric phase, and Prince finds that depth and magnifies it with her visionary choreography.
photo courtesy of Lynn Theisen
Some of her most notable work is the desperate dances of war and captivity in “”King of Pain”, “Invisible Sun”, and the allusions to rape and abuse in “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” (handled tastefully but point made). Equally impressive is the New York Club scene where Mati comes to understand and bravely explore his blossoming sexual fluidity (also handled with beauty and grace). But Prince has created a breathtaking set piece for the oldest brother’s search for his lost love, a thrilling, inspired pas de deux featuring the brother and the shadow of his missing wife in “The Bed’s Too Big Without You”, wherein he reaches to embrace her shadow just as quickly she evaporates, never catching her as she continuously reappears in another area of the bed for a brilliantly exhausting dance of love and desire. As impressive as that movement is, however, she immediately exceeds it in the pinnacle of the show, “Roxanne”, devised as a ballad of loss and frustration when he finds his defeated wife in a den of drug abuse and prostitution. Despite passionate physical pleas, he is devastated to accept that he cannot save the woman she has become. But Prince knows how to bring a tale of sadness, despair, terror, loss, growth, and acceptance full circle on a note of inspiration and positivity in the reunion finale of “They Dance Alone”.
photo courtesy of Helen Maybanks
I knew this review would be short and to the point, because the mesmerizing esoteric beauty Prince has created for the most part completely defies words. One can only throw around so many superlatives before it starts to ring hallow, so I have included the video advertisement from the Kennedy Center website to better give you an idea of what to expect and wallow in admiration of the human form in motion that can only be experienced live. It seems only natural to close this highly admirable review with a reference that, exactly like the production, seamlessly blends the artist who conceived it with the artist who inspired her: Considering Prince’s mastery of vision and creativity that I witnessed at the Kenned Center Opera House, let it suffice to say that Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.
Running Time: Approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes with one intermission
Message in a Bottle currently plays through April 21, 2024, at the Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F Street NW, Washington DC 20566. For tickets, call the box office at 202.467.4600 or purchase online