Dance Review: ZooNation's Message In A Bottle
Message In A Bottle, ZooNation
Photography by Johan Persson
Olivia Olphin reviews the hot new dance show Message In A Bottle, and explains why ZooNation are the dance company everyone should know about.
When writing a recipe for the perfect dance theatre show, one may not think that ingredients such as hip-hop, social critique, and break dance, together with Sting’s back catalogue, would be the perfect combination. However this is exactly the kind of Heston Blumenthal-style gastronomy that Katie Prince’s company ZooNation has achieved. The amalgamation of seemingly-disparate elements allows for a vital reworking of what hip-hop, breaking, whacking, and other “modern” dance disciplines can achieve. Three Michelin stars.
I have been a fan of ZooNation for over 10 years, since I attended my first workshop with one of their members, an incredible deaf artist who listened to and interpreted the vibrations of the music. I experienced their groundbreaking production Into the Hoods in 2010, based on the interweaving of fairy tales akin to Sondheim’s Into the Woods. This production had heart, humour, and a vibrant narrative often missing from dance theatre.
Next came Some Like it Hip Hop, a ferociously moving piece loosely based on the hit 1950’s film Some Like it Hot, as well as Shakespeare’s Twelth Night, featuring cross-dressing and mistaken identity. The production featured live vocals and music as well as the revamping of a now “old fashioned” narrative, placing it into our modern diverse society. This production moved ZooNation from eccentric dance troupe to a fully formed company with its own cultural identity and voice. Not only does the company champion female stories on stage but also behind the scenes, with the success of the choreographer Kate Prince through a new affiliation with the renowned Sadler’s Wells; she was also awarded an MBE in 2017.
Message In A Bottle, ZooNation
Photography by Johan Persson
Last year the company branched out again, this time into a “funk, hip-hop musical”. The company produced Sylvia, a story about Sylvia Pankhurst and the Suffragette women; 100 years after some women were first afforded the vote. This production starred West End star Beverley Knight and was ferocious, heart-breaking, and moving.
Last week I sat down in the stalls at the Peacock Theatre expecting another great show, but what I watched was beyond the regular level of ZooNation brilliance: it was transcendent. Kate Prince had transformed the works of Sting into a timely critique of the migrant crisis, and a story of love and estrangement. The story follows a family torn apart by war, forced to cross the sea to another country and detained because of their ethnicity. We follow the heart breaks as family members drown and others are lost. Kate Prince manages to keep the sincerity and truth of this narrative, whilst moving towards a message of acceptance and optimism.
The standout moment for me was a male/male duet between dancers Tommy Franzen and Samuel Baxter. This duet showed that through acceptance of ourselves and others we can move towards a place where all are welcome and can all love freely. This duet felt so natural and effortless that it is shocking to believe that Strictly Come Dancing received many Ofcom complaints for doing a similar thing earlier last year.
Message In A Bottle, ZooNation
Photography by Johan Persson
Message In A Bottle includes Sting and The Police hits such as ‘Fields of Gold’, ‘Every Breath You Take’, ‘Roxanne’, and the titular ‘Message in a Bottle’, as well as new and goosebump-inducing covers by Beverley Knight.
If you have never seen live dance, ZooNation is the company for you. Not only is it a diverse company working in a vibrant, young, and eccentric style; it is also making work that is vitally relevant to our culture. The group works with young people all over the country through its outreach programs and young company. This is not an organisation obsessed with its own success, but one that gives back to the communities that helped it thrive.
We have received this message in a bottle and now it is our choice what to do with it. The iconic lyric “I’m sending an SOS to the world” is transformed into a cry for help from a population seriously at risk. ZooNation are calling out to our humanity, and I think we should listen.
Organisations to donate to: Choose Love, shop till you drop for those who really need it; Unicef, protecting child refugees; Good Hope Theatre, changing lives through the power of theatre.