Message in a Bottle invites us to question the guarded walls surrounding our garden of privilege and safety, and reflect on the skills, love, hope, and opportunities that refugees can bring. It asks us whether we live in one world as a united human race or in fenced and guarded compounds that see all other humans as a threat rather than a friend. Sadler’s Wells Message In A Bottle arrives in cinemas across the UK on May 30. BOOK TICKETS HERE
A person is not a number. Yet political discussions on refugees and asylum seekers talk only about numbers and very rarely discuss the individuals crammed into boats or those who walk hundreds of miles for safety, seeing no option but to leave everything they once had, including family and friends, for the hope of something new. Each individual has their own story and a reason for risking everything for a journey that may fail.
As we sit in our walled garden of indifference and privilege, a garden that has never, in modern times, seen our country invaded by others, bombed or plunged into catastrophic poverty through civil unrest or economic failure, we count numbers and talk of increasing the height of our garden wall; apparently, we have no space for newcomers in a country that desperately needs more young people to keep the lights on and our public services working as our population ages.
But what if the tables were turned? What if your family, your children, sisters, brothers or friends faced rape and abuse, war, death or abject poverty? Would you sit still in the hope that everything would work out ok? Or would you risk it all for hope, security and life? Sadler’s Wells’ awe-inspiring production, Message In A Bottle, set to the music of Grammy Award-winning artist Sting and choreographed by Kate Prince, asks us to discard the concept of numbers and focus on individuals.
Told through a mix of electric and athletic dance styles that perfectly dovetail with Sting’s extensive catalogue of music, the Sadler’s Wells production is honest, urgent, beautiful and deeply emotional as we follow three siblings whose peaceful village is suddenly and violently subject to the horrors of war and conflict. When their father is murdered, their mother decides they must flee and take the perilous journey millions of displaced people around the world take daily in the hope they find safety and security.
Now, in partnership with the Royal Opera House, Message In A Bottle is coming to cinemas nationwide on May 30, giving audiences across the United Kingdom the opportunity to experience this urgent, world-class production for the first time.
Judith Jamison once said, “If you look at a dancer in silence, his or her body will be the music. If you turn the music on, that body will become an extension of what you’re hearing.” Never has that been truer than spending one and a half hours in the company of ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company and Sting. Without the need for speech, dance and music combine to create utterly divine storytelling that is incredibly powerful and enthralling.
Time stops during Message in a Bottle as you are swept away by this urgent story of the global refugee crisis, a story that explores the abject horror of war and conflict, the risks of fleeing, the hopes dashed by asylum systems based on divisive political ideology rather than humanity, and the power communities of love and acceptance can offer in building new lives.
Message in a Bottle never shies away from challenging themes, ranging from rape, abuse and corruption to the deadly sea crossings people make in the hope of something new. It takes square aim at the political ideologies that would have you believe that each “number”, not person, is an economic migrant and that we do not bear any responsibility for protecting people in countries we once invaded or bombed and then abruptly left. It asks us to look at ourselves and place our family, partners and friends in the position of the millions of people who leave everything behind every year.
Message in a Bottle invites us to question the guarded walls surrounding our garden of privilege and safety, and reflect on the skills, love, hope, and opportunities that refugees can bring. It asks us whether we live in one world as a united human race or in fenced and guarded compounds that see all other humans as a threat rather than a friend.
In a world of such turmoil, death and destruction, it challenges us to create something better. As Khaled Hosseini said, “Refugees are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and children with the same hopes and ambitions as us – except that a twist of fate has bound their lives to a global refugee crisis on an unprecedented scale.” That scale is only set to increase as global warming intensifies and conflicts escalate. Message in a Bottle asks us to find a new and better way to approach that crisis, one built on humanity, compassion, and care for our fellow human race.
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