Beauty in Motion: Van Cleef & Arpels and the World of Dance
Van Cleef & Arpels’ enduring affinity with the world of the choreographic arts is epitomised by its jewellery and watches, and partnerships with dance companies and institutions the world over.
When Van Cleef & Arpels made its return to the Watches & Wonders fair earlier this year, it presented magnificent works that evoke the poetry of time, a magical expression of time and its indication and passage, realised through the Maison’s watchmaking expertise and jewellery savoir-faire. While the Poetic Astronomy automaton and the Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier timepiece articulated the mystique surrounding time and the natural world, the Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée watch intimated the connection between time and dance. Reimagined from a reference introduced in 2013 — which took inspiration from a quote by Anna Pavlova: “I dreamed that I was a ballerina, and that I spent my life dancing as light as a butterfly…” — the Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée now exhibits a more dynamic posture in the figure of the dancer, and new colours and materials on her tutu created with champlevé and plique-à-jour enamel, as well as a self-winding double retrograde movement and time-on-demand module — an extraordinary ode to the ballerina, a prominent emblem of the Maison.
Van Cleef & Arpels has had a long history depicting, collaborating with, and supporting the world of dance. In the 1920s in Paris, Louis Arpels, a ballet enthusiast, would often take his nephew Claude with him to the Opéra Garnier. Some 20 years later, Louis Arpels directed the Maison’s artisans to create bejewelled clips portraying lithe ballerinas in elegant costumes, inspired by famous dancers such as Russian doyenne Anna Pavlova; the diminutive figures wore faces of gold or rose-cut diamond and dresses set with gemstones, their slender silhouettes exuding lightness, elegance, vigour and spontaneity.
This relationship between Van Cleef & Arpels and the world of dance was further strengthened in the 1950s, when Claude Arpels met the choreographer George Balanchine, co-founder of the New York City Ballet. Both men were enamoured with gemstones and shared a love of dance, and an artistic partnership was ignited when Balanchine created the three-act abstract ballet Jewels, which debuted in 1967. Its three chapters were each inspired by emeralds, rubies and diamonds, and set to music from composers Gabriel Fauré, Igor Stravinsky, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
On the 40th anniversary of Jewels, Van Cleef & Arpels collaborated with the London Royal Ballet on the Ballet Précieux high jewellery collection of remarkable pieces based on four themes: ballet, emeralds, rubies and diamonds. The Maison expanded the collection in 2013 with jewels inspired by five famous Russian ballets including Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, and again in 2016 with figurative and abstract creations in homage to classical ballets such as Les Sylphides and Le Pavillon d’Armide.
More than 50 years after the debut of Jewels, Van Cleef & Arpels unveiled the Lady Arpels Ballerines Musicales watches, a three-piece series within the Poetic Complications collection that melds music, movement, and artistic expression. Each miniature tableau depicts a theatre stage draped with lavish curtains, with a diamond-set upper dial highlighting the retrograde time indication on a graduated 12-hour scale, and on-demand animation set to music: The curtains part to reveal hand-painted ballerinas who appear to flit across the dial to notes from a music box and a carillon underneath — tunes derived from the score of Jewels.
Going beyond crafting dance-inspired jewellery and timepieces, Van Cleef & Arpels throws its support behind advancing the choreographic arts. Ongoing since 2012, the Maison’s partnership with French dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied and his L.A. Dance Project Company has brought forth a series of powerful, emotive works, and in 2020 the Maison created Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, to support dance companies and institutions and broaden the reach of contemporary works. The programme currently has commitments in France (such as with Festival d’Automne à Paris, and Théâtre de la Ville and Chaillot — Théâtre National de la Danse), Italy (with Romaeuropa Festival and Académie de France in Rome — Villa Médicis) and the UK (with Sadler’s Wells and the Royal Opera House), and it has plans to extend its range of partnerships this year to other regions, such as the US, Middle East and Asia-Pacific region.
