ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company in Message in a Bottle

Peacock Theatre, London October 2023

In about 1973, a Los Angeles group of dancers called the Lockers appeared on a blazing white stage in a small New York theatre. They wore a Day-Glo riot of checked pants, striped shirts and oversize hats, and they moved like no dancers I’d ever seen, cracking action into fragments and twisting their limbs in impossible ways. As our jaws dropped, we wondered how anyone could avoid being permanently damaged.

Those dancers were the first most of us knew of the style that gradually evolved into hip hop. Tossed into the downtown New York scene like a string of firecrackers, they had been united by Don “Campbellock” Campbell, who dreamed up the style called locking, and Toni Basil, a dancer-choreographer who was a member of the group. Fifty years later, that is, right now, the moves they showed us then have been refined and are widely taught. And the competitive vibes and Loony Tunes shapes of street dance now permeate dance culture, both onstage and off.

Until the director-choreographer Kate Prince founded her London-based company, ZooNation, in 2002, you seldom saw hip hop in a theatrical performance. Then her first full-evening piece, Into the Hoods, became the first hip hop show in the West End where it ran for five months, and one original production after another has brought her company and choreography increased popularity.

Created in 2020, Message in a Bottle follows a family forced by civil war to abandon its country; separated by circumstances, imprisoned on foreign shores, the refugees struggle desperately to survive. “When I make dance,” Prince has said, “it’s important to me that it’s about something and that we’ve got loads of story, background, research and loads of layers.”

Set to 27 songs by Sting recorded in new arrangements, the narrative emerges clearly from a non-stop storm of activity—the situations it depicts have sadly become so familiar that naturalistic gestures can tell the tale. Surprisingly, the economy of those exchanges came as a welcome relief. Prince structures stage space imaginatively, constantly realigning the groups in patterns that guide our focus, but she seems uncomfortable with stillness and simplicity, so we had few chances to draw breath between the hyperactive scenes.

Here’s another surprise. Prince confines hip hop solely to break dancing, which many consider the first hip hop style. Initially an upright form, it headed to the floor as it absorbed elements of martial arts and gymnastics, and now its astounding head spins, full-body flips, flying splits, and one-hand balances have become familiar.

I missed any sense of hip hop as a freestyle form that builds its effect from improvisation, but that doesn’t suit a choreographed show and neither does the street element of aggressive battles between dance crews. I had hoped to see some locking and popping, knowing that each has its own character and distinct vocabulary of clearly isolated freezes and muscular contractions. Those didn’t appear onstage either, and the audience, riding the show’s momentum, probably didn’t notice or care.

Prince isn’t into dance for its stylistic subtleties, which may partly account for her success. Her talent lies in orchestrating energy and conveying intimate feelings, welding physicality to personal fervor. She has collected a troupe of winning dancers and makes gender distinctions between them only for dramatic purposes, so the women hurtle through the same death-defying feats as the men.

For about 90 minutes, they filled the stage with exhilarating athleticism, vibrant character and emotionally charged encounters. Relaxed and secure in their skill, theatrical without seeming artificial, they behaved just like the ordinary people you might meet in the street…if all those people could dance.

At the Peacock Theatre until October 14, then touring internationally, with a New York debut in April 2024. See messageinabottleshow.co.uk