A musical journey
For ‘Message in a Bottle,’ choreographer Kate Prince began with Sting’s music — and found a story to tell
Four years after opening in London’s West End, “Message in a Bottle” has made its way over the pond. The narrative dance production set to music by Sting stops in Chicago at the front end of a North American tour with a limited engagement soon at the Cadillac Palace Theater.
Choreographer Kate Prince set the production on her London-based dance company, ZooNation — her artistic home for more than 20 years. Prince’s distinct blend of street and contemporary dance is the vehicle for her story-driven productions, including celebrated shows like “Some Like It Hip Hop,” “Into the Hoods,” and “The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.”
Every show she makes, five-time Olivier Award nominee Prince tries to do something a little bit different. In the case of “Message in a Bottle,” it was drawing from existing music instead of original compositions — something she’d only done once prior. That music just so happens to be from Sting.
“I genuinely have been a fan of Sting’s all my life,” Prince said in a phone interview from her London home. So much so that “Walking on the Moon” was one of the songs she and her husband chose for their wedding ceremony in 2016.
“That reignited the presence of his music in my mind,” she said. “I was listening to it a lot on my headphones on our honeymoon, and I kept thinking how much I wanted to choreograph to it.”
She took the idea to Sadler’s Wells, the prominent London dance presenter of ZooNation’s work.
“It was really quick, actually,” Prince said. “Within a couple of months, I was pitching the idea in a hotel lobby to Sting.”
Sting gave the green light after a two-week workshop, weighing in throughout the show’s development but ultimately letting Prince do her thing.
“They say you should never meet your heroes,” she said. “He’s just such a nice, down-to-earth, kind, generous person. He said he was really surprised at how emotional he was watching the dancing. We talked at one point about how he’d spent his whole career listening to his music, but he’d never looked at his music.”
“Message in a Bottle” opened in the West End’s Peacock Theatre in February 2020, then was forced into early closure by the pandemic. It was revived in 2021, touring Australia and Europe, but only now embarking on stops in the United States and Canada.
If three is a trend, “Message in a Bottle” joins a recent flurry toward dance-driven jukebox shows on Chicago stages. “Sugar Hill” celebrated the Ellington-Strayhorn “Nutcracker” in December. And Justin Peck’s new homage to Sufjan Stevens, “Illinoise,” is now on its way to New York after a few weeks at Chicago Shakespeare. What they all have in common is a desire to honor the music as-is. Other jukebox musicals like “Mama Mia!” or “Jagged Little Pill,” for example, have musical-ified arrangements sung by actors on stage. Prince knew that was out of the question for “Message in a Bottle.”
“The USP (unique selling point) of Sting in many ways is his incredibly special vocals,” she said. “I wanted as a fan to preserve that. I wanted to be able to say that if I listened to the album of music that is in the show, that I would love the album.”
Guest vocalists Beverly Knight and Lynval Golding add a layer of female vocals to the soundtrack, arranged by Alex Lacamoire, best known for his work on “Hamilton” and “The Greatest Showman.” And Sting stayed involved in the process, signing off on Lacamoire’s arrangements and recording new vocals expressly for the show, including a fresh version of “Every
Breath You Take.”
“I have tried to really honor and respect it as a musical journey,” she said. “You can come as a music fan and that is intact.”
Hits from The Police and Sting’s solo career are all there: “Roxanne,” “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic,” “Walking on the Moon,” “Englishman in New York,” “Shape of My Heart” and “Fields of Gold” among them.
“If you’re coming because you’re a dance fan, you’re going to have a familiarity with his music,” Prince said. “And you’re going to see exceptional, individual dance artists at the top of their game who literally leave it all on the floor.”
Another layer of “Message in a Bottle” is its story, a tale of three siblings separated from their parents when their village comes under siege. Prince says the journey is fictional but it’s an amalgam of real-life examples.
“Every single moment in the show is taken from a photograph, or a documentary, or a newsreel,” said Prince, who spent weeks researching the show before choreographing a single step. “These are real stories that are happening globally all the time.”
Prince was particularly impacted by the story of 2-yearold Alan Kurdi, whose body washed ashore in Turkey after his family’s failed attempt at fleeing Syria. Prince’s daughter was the same age as Kurdi when a photograph of his body face down on the beach surfaced in the media.
“That was my reason for wanting to tell this story,” Prince said. But the production’s trappings — including sets by Ben Stones, lighting by Natasha Chivers, video by Andrzej Goulding and costumes by Anna Fleischle — aren’t aimed at any particular moment or place. In other words, the three siblings in “Message in a Bottle” could just as easily be perceived as Syrian refugees, Ukrainians or Gazans fleeing war, families separated at the southern U.S. border or a Venezuelan family stepping off a bus in Chicago.
“It’s global, which is why we’ve made it fictional,” Prince said. “Our village is called Bebko. Our country has no name. Our cast is of many different heritages.”
Dramaturg Lolita Chakrabarti Obe weighed in to assist in shaping the narrative, which Prince says is ultimately uplifting and joyful.
“I keep being told don’t talk about politics when you’re talking about your work, because I’m trying to make a piece of art,” Prince said. “But it’s all real. It’s all true. It’s all happening. What kind of artist are you if you just put your blinkers on and ignore the world? I don’t like dances to have empty steps. I don’t want them to dance about nothing. I want them to dance about something.”
“Message in a Bottle” runs Feb. 28 to March 3 at the Cadillac Palace Theater, 151 W. Randolph St.; tickets are $32-$95 at www.broadwayinchicago.com