''George Balanchine saw his work as a choreographer very much as that of a craftsman, so I think there’s a very nice similarity between the jewellers I’ve met at Van Cleef & Arpels and the work that we do as choreographers. Sometimes choreography is all about polishing and refining.''
Benjamin Millepied, choreographer.

For now, let’s go back a few years. The house of Van Cleef & Arpels has a long tradition in supporting creation and creativity and has collaborated with artists from around the world in various projects, especially in the field of dance, with the most famous being that with choreographer George Balanchine in the 1960’s. As the founder of the New York City Ballet and a celebrated figure in the history of neoclassical ballet, Balanchine was the ideal person to transfer Van Cleef & Arpels’ inspired haute joaillerie creations to the dance stage. The result: a trilogy of ballets titled ‘Jewels’, each of its parts corresponding to a precious stone, namely the ruby, the diamond and the emerald. ‘Jewels’ had an enormous impact on the dance world, not only because of its ‘eye-catching’ subject and glittering gem-laden costumes (the dancers were dressed as jewels), but also because it was the first full-length abstract ballet in the history of classical dance — or in other words, it was the first ballet that had no storyline, characters or narrative in the sense that, let’s say, ‘The Nutcracker’ has.

''Rubies are about the intensity of the colour, the vibration. Diamonds are really about light and structures and geometry. Rubies are power of colour — they are red, bright as you can get. Diamonds are light.'' 
Nicolas Bos, CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels.

Returning to 2014, Van Cleef & Arpels is still intimately connected to the world of dance, partly through a long-term collaboration with choreographer and dancer Benjamin Millepied, founder of the L.A. Dance Project dance company and recently appointed Director for Dance at the Opéra National de Paris. Van Cleef & Arpels commissioned Millepied to create a new trilogy based on the original ‘Jewels’ ballet by Balanchine called ''GEMS'', as a tribute to the master’s work and a way of bringing about Millepied’s vision of these precious stones and the emotions they can provoke on the stage. The first part of this trilogy (the one corresponding to rubies) was produced in 2013 bearing the title ‘Reflections’, and consisted of a new choreographic work that toured the world and a dance film set in Los Angeles. For the second part of the trilogy, which corresponds to diamonds, Millepied chose to collaborate with multitalented visual artist Liam Gillick, whom he invited to create the set design for the performance. The music was by no other than Philip Glass, a composer whose music moves me deeply, while the costumes were designed by Janie Taylor.

As you can imagine, the resulting performance was simply enchanting: the dancers’ bodies moved on stage like interconnected prisms, forming something that I can only describe as akin to ‘a riviera of diamonds’. Liam Gillick’s subtle lightings, meant to accentuate the multiple perspectives and facets of the performers and the dance, played mainly with light and shadow, creating a captivating ambience around the dancers that consisted only of pure light! (He used no colour whatsoever, the stage was all white and bare.) The title ‘Hearts and Arrows’ doesn’t appear to have anything to do with diamonds; but as I found out later, ‘hearts and arrows’ is a method used by gemologists to assess the reflecting qualities of a diamond, and takes its name from the shapes that the light creates within the stone. Thus, Millepied’s new work becomes connected to the original concept and Van Cleef’s artefacts in an indirect and yet intelligent way.

After the performance, we were instructed to follow the dancers to an undisclosed location, where the rest of the evening would unfold. We went out onto the street and walked just around the corner to the Alfred I. duPont building, one of Miami’s most iconic landmarks. Originally the headquarters of the National Bank of Florida, the building is a characteristic example of the Moderne style, with a minimal, streamlined late-Art Deco exterior and luscious relief and stucco decorations depicting local animals and plants inside. In the former bank’s lobby, tables had been extravagantly set for dinner whilst a menu by two-Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud was about to be served. Meanwhile, on the walls, video projections were showing the ‘Reflections’ dance film by Benjamin Millepied (which I mentioned earlier). The most impressive part of the setting however was to be found in the massive bank vaults. Here, a jewellery exhibition had been set up to a musical accompaniment that incorporated the tinkling sound of gems and jewels. What most impressed was the fact that we had to actually go into the vault in order to see the jewels, it made me feel precious and safe in a way. With that said, I don't even want to think what would've happened if that massive steel door closed behind me locking me inside the vault!

''As jewellers and high-jewellers we are part of the world of visual arts; so we feel that it is our duty and our responsibility to help promote that aspect of culture and art and to help educate about the history and importance of decorative arts.''
Nicolas Bos, CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels.

The whole evening was the perfect way to kick off Miami’s Art Week, and it truly stayed with me for days afterwards. I have a deep respect for the way in which Van Cleef & Arpels genuinely supports creation and has reinvented its history through collaborating with contemporary artists. Dazzling as the theme may have been, ‘Hearts and Arrows’ was about something more than luxury and adornment: it managed to bring forth human relationships and emotions, and make them visible, tangible even, for the audience. Sitting in the plane on my way home, I closed my eyes and remembered those magical moments, so fleeting and fragile, of a riviera of diamonds emerging in a transparent landscape of light and music.

While in Miami for ''Hearts & Arrows'', I had the chance to sit next to Liam Gillick, the performance’s set designer, in the Olympia Theatre only hours before the premiere. Born in 1964 in the UK and currently living in New York City, Gillick is an acclaimed conceptual artist who has engaged with all sorts of artistic projects over the years, from visual art and installations all the way through to writing. He was invited by Benjamin Millepied to propose a set design for the Hearts & Arrows performance, and went on to prepare no less than five proposals for the project!

The following interview took place amidst loud-speaking technicians, dancers doing silly walks on stage and of course the music of Philip Glass playing randomly for the rehearsals; a chaotic but unforgettable experience in itself.

COSTAS VOYATZIS: Hello, Liam. What are you up to here?
LIAM GILLICK: Well the premise here was my really wanting to work with the stagecraft itself. The starting point was actually a very basic idea: the relationship between light and shadow, in essence the structures that we see on the stage are produced by shadow and light. What I want to do - as an artist - is to make what I did less obvious and keep the focus very much on the dancers and their dance. So in a way the set only exists for the service of the dancers. You become aware that the set is also an activated component, just as the dancers are activated. So the lighting system becomes dynamic: sometimes it produces light, sometimes it sucks light away.

So the set is a part of the choreography.
In a sense. That’s what we’re working on now, which is why it’s quite incredible whilst seeming also very subtle at times. It has a lot of different moods and tones and it shifts the dynamic all the time. I didn’t want to have merely a surface on which people perform, I wanted the set to somehow produce the whole ambience around the dancers.

May I ask the reason why it’s white? Is it because of the diamond concept?
In a way, yeah… But you know, I didn’t think about the diamond that much… I thought more about the general idea of a thing that produces light. I also have a strong feeling that it is also about sound, because I always think of how there’s a diamond at the tip of the needle of a record player! As a kid this was my feeling of the metric of a diamond: it produces sound and light at the same time. So for me the set design for ‘Hearts and Arrows’ is all about that. With that said, I need to stress that the focus of course is on people, not the thing. Do you see what I mean? I’m not trying to represent anything as a metaphor. Because the real focus is on the people, in our case the dancers, so we try to create light from different facets: sometimes you see just a silhouette or a form, and sometimes you see everything and clearly. It’s like a trick; everything here is a trick to make you watch and focus on the dancing itself. 

How did you meet Benjamin Millepied?
He just sent me an email, a personal email. One to one, directly. I really liked that. Because otherwise everything can seem like a lot of artificial nonsense leading you to believe that there may be another agenda or something... But when someone actually contacts you directly it means he’s taking responsibility for that choice, he brings you in to do your thing... Which in turn gives you a lot of freedom to work as you want. He didn’t give me a brief or anything, he just said: do you want to do something together? So the first thing he did was to show me how he worked with the dancers; he took me to the Opera in Paris, the Garnier, just to sit with him and watch — just watch him work. It was such a nice thing to do, because it’s the perfect way to begin a collaboration with someone you have never worked with before. To see someone just working as they usually do is the most direct way for them to express their method to you.

Transparency…
Yes, but also it’s also very private, it’s like you have been given special access to a very private space.

What ‘turns you on’ creatively?
Em… It’s probably taking into consideration the whole structure in a way - not just one element. Let’s say I’m more interested in the idea of the exhibition as a whole than the single artwork. For example here, in this theatre now, to be witnessing this whole process, listening to people, understanding all the systems... That’s what turns me on. Also there’s a slightly cinematic aspect intwined the situation here – you know, like the musical where they show the process of producing a musical? Or like a Jean-Luc Godard film where they show the making of the film. It’s a self-referential situation where the structure, the mechanism of cinema, or theatre or whatever is being shown… As a younger artist I used to do this a lot with exhibitions, trying to make the audience aware of the situation, the condition they’re in, without just telling them by demonstrating it. I want to accomplish the same thing with ‘Hearts and Arrows’, that is, to expose the theatre, make the theatre visible from the inside… There’s a beauty in theatre, right? There’s an elegance in showcasing the tools that go into and are behind the whole.

{to be continued!}