Leaping and pirouetting, arms outstretched, two dancers move toward each other and embrace, only to come apart, tracing a wide circle. All the while, a clock ticks loudly in the midst of compositions by Marin Marais, Philip Glass, and Arvo Pärt, as if the stage were the face of a clock and the dancers the embodiment of the passing minutes and seconds. French dancer-choreographer David Drouard created this dramatic scene for Time in Motion, a three-part contemporary ballet commissioned last year by Hermès to celebrate the luxury house’s 100 years in watchmaking.
The bold performance, which premiered in London and traveled to the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York in March, also coincided with the launch of the Dressage Chronograph, the first Hermès watch to be completed entirely in house.
Watchmakers and jewelers seem to have recently found renewed inspiration in dance, a visceral, romantic art form that, like fine jewelry, often expresses what words can’t.
Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin has looked to great dance-inspired moments in art history for the newest additions to its Métiers d’Art collection. Marking the 300th year of L’Ecole de Danse de l’Opéra National de Paris, established by Louis XIV in 1713 as the school of L’Académie Royale de la Danse, Vacheron’s three new Hommage à l’Art de la Danse watches capture iconic images from French Impressionist Edgar Degas’s paintings Ballet Room at the Opera in Rue le Peletier, Ballet Rehearsal, and Two Dancers on Stage.
Dancers in training, rehearsal, and performance are reinterpreted in detail, from the fold of a tutu to the flowers in a dancer’s hair, through Vacheron’s Grand Feu grisaille enameling technique. Using a translucent brown enamel base to add warmth and depth to the images, the master artisan then applies Limoges white enamel, employing delicate tools such as needles, cactus thorns, and extremely fine brushes.
Jeweler Fabergé has paired ballet with haute joaillerie in its collection Les Danses Fantasques. The house, a favorite of the Russian aristocracy in the late 1800s, celebrates the romance and high drama of Russian dance in four suites of jewelry, each named for a Russian ballet and featuring a necklace, earrings, and rings with white diamonds and colored gemstones. The Luda suite, which includes an elegant bow-shaped diamond necklace with an emerald drop, is inspired by the opera and ballet Ruslan and Ludmila. La Esmerelda, Raymonda, and Giselle, by Marius Petipa, the choreographer behind some of the world’s best-known ballets (including The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, and, with Lev Ivanov, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker) provided inspiration for the other suites in the collection.
Van Cleef & Arpels is no stranger, either, to the power of dance. In the 1940s, Louis Arpels asked the company to transform his love of the ballet into jeweled works of art. The result was a series of ballerina clips inspired by dance world legends such as Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova and 18th-century Belgian dancer Marie Anne de Cupis de Camargo. In the 1960s, choreographer George Balanchine became friends with Claude Arpels. Their shared interest in precious stones spurred Balanchine to create his 1967 ballet triptych “Jewels,” dedicating each of its parts to a stone and a composer. Emeralds had music by Gabriel Fauré; Rubies, Igor Stravinsky; and Diamonds, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Van Cleef & Arpels Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée watch / Courtesy of Van Cleef & Arpels
Today, Van Cleef & Arpels has found a new friend in French choreographer Benjamin Millepied, a former principal at New York City Ballet, founder of the L.A. Dance Project, and soon-to-be director of dance of the Paris Opera Ballet. Millepied looked to the jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels to inspire his new ballet Reflections, evoking the play of light on the jewels and the intrigue in their multiple facets. The ballet premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in May, marking the first part of a trilogy entitled “Gems.” Coinciding with the production, Van Cleef & Arpels unveiled three new ballerina clips in white gold and diamonds.
The highlight of Van Cleef’s presentation at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie was the Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée Poetic Complication, a watch with a double retrograde mechanical movement that shows the time on demand. Its design was inspired by the mechanism of a piece from the company’s watchmaking heritage: the Magicien Chinois pocket watch from 1927, with a figure indicating the hours and minutes by raising his arms. Here, the ballerina is sculpted in relief and set with diamonds, and her tutu serves to indicate the time at the push of a button. Dance, it appears, has a powerful magic of its own.
