I have had tickets booked for this event since before April 2023 and I have been very much looking forward to going to see it. It was at The Lowry. Which frankly is a bit of a pain to get to (and back) from these days. I’ve been to a few events here before and sure while the majority of them I have been alone for and been able to get to and from without issue, it seems whenever I take a guest with me, everything falls apart. Getting there was fine, the train was on-time from Lime Street and 55 minutes later we arrived at Deansgate. A short walk to the tram and then 20 minutes later we’d arrived at The Lowry. Not really enough time to enjoy something to eat prior to the event, so we sat and relaxed with a pre-show drink. Soon enough the house opened up and we headed in to find out seats. I’d booked end of row seats for the additional leg room they often provide and we were 5-10 rows back from the front, still in the center block but on the end of the row on the right.

After a few moments the show started. Above the ‘Message in a Bottle’ title screen which was projected onto the curtain, was the words ‘One Family. Three Stories’. The show was.. ‘set to’ would give the wrong connotations, but ‘inspired’ by the music of Sting. The 17 Grammy Award Winning Artist of The Police and Solo fame. – This is what attracted me to the show in the first place.. Dance set to the music of Sting. Some of the song choices were.. questionable and some of them were straight up murdered, cut down, elongated, altered in one way or another. It was a frustrating thing to listen to as you know what the songs should sound like. So that for me was the first misleading aspect of the show. It really featured ‘sections of songs’ by Sting.

The dancing itself.. now look, you’ll have to forgive me for a moment.. It was ‘Dance Theatre’ which is a valid form of dance performance that doesn’t require any further validation from me, it wasn’t ‘Dance’ as I expected it to be. I think I just saw ‘Dance’ and ‘Sting’ and thought ‘Great’. But it was reading the shows promo out loud moments prior to the show that had me a little worried, and those worries were… confounded when the show started. The next part of this review is going to sound ‘snobbish’, but there is no malicious intent. Dance should be open to individual interpretation anyway… So here goes.

I have the greatest of respect to all the talented folks who can get up on a stage and perform in one way or another. I really do. I’d love to have done so in my life, but I don’t have whatever it is that is needed to do so and I have no were near the talent required either. When you are on stage in a theatre, acting in a drama or a play, sometimes in order to get across the thoughts and feelings of the character you are playing, you could be required to exaggerate your movements, so that people in not only the front row, can see the emotions you are trying to portray. In Modern, Classic, Traditional Dance.. There’s no exaggeration, it’s simply not required. Each and every person decides for themselves what they date from the dance, from the physical act of movement, or non-movement. – I felt that throughout Message in a Bottle, movements were acted out, not danced. They were exaggerated past the point of being flowing kinetic motion. This was Dance Theatre, not Dance.

There was dancing within and throughout the show that is for sure and some of the artists on stage could carry a movement better than others, that was clear. But I couldn’t give you the names of who, as they didn’t provide a printed program, something which seems to be happening more and more of late. Having a physical reminder of what you went to see just elevates things to another level. I was disappointed to find out there was only a digital program available, so much so I frankly didn’t bother getting it. It was a surprise that for such a big name in dance, Kate Prince, and with a large tour such as the one this show is undergoing now, no printed program feels like an oversight or a budget line cut in favor of something else. Shame.

The first half had a very minimalistic stage presentation with a projection at the back of the stage giving an overall background video presentation, and very few props used on the stage.. a wooden crate for the most part, whereas the second half featuring moving stage parts, a metal climbing frame-style structure with lights and more. The frame was used as many a different setup throughout the second half. The first half was roughly an hour long with the second half being shorter. It really felt that way too. Like the first half was too long, with too much setup to the story, then the second half felt more rushed.. rushed to tell the conclusions to each of the three stories and to wrap things up at the end. I won’t go into detail on what the storyline of the show is, in case anybody would like to see it who hasn’t been yet.. But there was at points a major disconnect between sections of the story. Disappointingly the song ‘Roxanne’ was used twice during the performance, once per half, both times a stereotypical portrayal of actions were chosen to go with this song.. cliche to say the least! Some sections felt like they really didn’t have much thought put into them, which from Kate Prince, I really can’t imagine that being the intention. Some songs were butchered by being shortened, sped up or even just covered completely. Some songs were not chosen to feature at all, in many places where an extra bit of music could have filled a gap.

There was a standout moment in the second half which featured a duet between one of the three focus points for the stories and another dancer. This was pure dance. Pure movement. Nothing was exaggerated and if the rest of it had have had the attention this particular piece had, then I’d have nothing to moan about and this review would be quite different. But alas it was one scene in a collection of many and therefore lost and somewhat buried down within a quiet section of the second half. I have to say also, the second half was more exciting than the first, but the show used words such as ‘extraordinary’, ‘ground-breaking’, ‘frantic’ and ‘exciting’ to describe itself before-hand… Sure, some of the styles of dance within it were frantic, street-dance… but groundbreaking it was not. Extraordinary.. I really didn’t see or feel anything from the show that suggested it was anything special. It just didn’t speak to me in the same way that the usual kind of Dance Performance I go to does, and if that makes me a snob.. then so be it. I like what I like and now I know and understand more, the differences and distinctions between Dance and Dance Theatre. – There’s nothing wrong with Dance Theatre, it’s just not the style of Dance I usually find myself enjoying. I also want to add that I have no issue with Dance telling a story. But the story should be natural and open to interpretation by the viewer. There should be nothing forced, nothing theatrical about it.

Live and Learn.. and on to the next.. which has the potential to be dance of a similar nature, but it’s a Matthew Bourne Performance.. so let’s hope it has more about it than Message in a Bottle did. The Guardian gave it four stars… it gets three from me.