A story of refugees set to Sting’s music comes to the Miller in ‘Message in a Bottle’

Message in a Bottle is a dance show, a jukebox musical set to 27 songs by Sting.

But it goes much deeper.

It’s about family, said director and choreographer Kate Prince. And it’s about war, strife, and refugees. It opens May 14 at the Miller Theater, the end of a North American tour that started in February in Los Angeles.

“It’s something that I hope everyone in the whole world can relate to,” Prince said. “It’s about a family that starts whole and becomes fractured and broken, and the resilience of those people, and what they go on to do, and how they survive.

“It’s based around truth. Every single moment, every scene is based on a real person, a real experience.”

Message in a Bottle is hip-hop and contemporary dance. Many of the dancers are from Prince’s company, ZooNation, a London-based troupe that is a resident company of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Much of the show is based on Rania’s Odyssey, a 22-minute documentary a 20-year-old refugee filmed about her journey from Syria to Austria.

But ultimately, the inspiration was Sting.

“I am a massive Sting fan, like unashamedly. And my family was as well; it really united us as a family. The first concert I ever went to was Sting at Wembley,” said Prince. “We went, four of us, my mum and my dad and my brother, we all went together.

“When I met my husband, we both really bonded over the music of the Police. And when we got married … the whole congregation sang ‘Walking on the Moon.’”

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The Sting-athon continued during Prince’s honeymoon, too.

“I was listening to his music on the beach in Greece, and I was like, ‘I just want to choreograph to this.’” She wrote to her boss at Sadler’s Wells and about two months later, managed to meet Sting and his manager in a hotel lobby.

From there, Prince had two weeks to develop choreography for his approval.

“He said something once about how he’s always spent his whole career listening to what his music sounds like, but he didn’t know what his music looked like,” Prince said.

“And the story is quite emotional. He is a political person, and he is someone who cares about the world and cares about people and has written beautiful lyrics about a lot of different issues in the world. And I think, a lot of that, and the politics sort of comes across in the piece.”

Prince started making Message in a Bottle in 2017. It opened in London’s West End in February 2020, and closed two weeks later when COVID became a global pandemic.

But unlike many shows, it survived COVID and thrived. It’s been performed throughout Europe and Australia and was on the PBS series Great Performances in November.

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But Message is hardly Prince’s first big show. She has choreographed for the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic handover ceremonies in 2008, the opening ceremony of the Tour de France in 2007, and the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.

She has worked on the British version of So You Think You Can Dance, as well as Strictly Come Dancing (a.k.a. Dancing With the Stars).

But now she’s focusing on her own company — on a part-time basis. In fact, all 10 women who run ZooNation are part-time workers, something that is more easily done in England, where “the U.K. Arts Council gives us a massive grant. We receive 1 million [pounds] every four years from them.”

“Since becoming a mum [nine years ago], I’ve tried to reformat my life so that I can really be home and present as much as possible and not take the big swanky jobs over the place, which I’m quite happy doing.”

Even Message in a Bottle mostly runs without her. “I go and check up on it,” she said two weeks ago. “I saw it in Australia, I saw it in London. I saw it in Los Angeles, and now I’m going to New York.”

Assistant choreographer Lizzie Gough, who is also a dancer, manages the show, allowing Prince to work at home on other projects.

“Honestly whenever I go I don’t really have much I need to do.”

“Message in a Bottle,” set to the music of Sting runs May 14-19. Miller Theater, 250 S. Broad St. Tickets start at $33. 215-893-1999. ensembleartsphilly.org