Van Cleef & Arpels’ Dance Reflections Festival Returns to New York
The event celebrates and supports the world of contemporary dance, honoring the jeweler’s long history with the art form.
Van Cleef & Arpels’s Dance Reflections festival is returning to New York this month with a series of 16 performances to take place across the city between February 19 and March 21. Dedicated to supporting creative artists and dance-adjacent institutions, the program will feature work by world-renowned choreographers, including Trisha Brown, Benjamin Millepied, and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. The city’s first iteration of the event took place in 2023, with the festival traveling to Kyoto, London, and Seoul in the following years. Now, it has returned to New York City, and is bigger than ever.
Festivities kick off on the 19th at the New York City Center with The Lyon Opera Ballet’s performance of Merce Cunningham’s Biped, followed by Mycelium by choreographer Christos Papadopoulos. From there, four weeks of dance events will be hosted throughout the boroughs. The Perelman Performing Arts Center will host a trio of performances choreographed by Millepied, presented in its entirety for the first time. At the Park Avenue Armory, meanwhile, one can find his Romeo & Juliet Suite, a contemporary take on Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet with dancers from the L.A. Dance Project. There is also Noé Soulier’s The Waves and Hervé Koubli’s Sol Invictus at The Joyce Theater, Lucinda Childs’s Early Works at the Guggenheim, and a number of productions taking place at NYU Skirball.
Dancers from the Benjamin Millepied L.A. Dance Project performing Reflections: A Triptych.
As a testament to Dance Reflections’ commitment to education, workshops will also be held at the New York Center for Creativity & Dance. Twenty contemporary dance classes are scheduled over the course of the program, and are open to all levels. The first workshop, Age of Content Repertory, will be held on February 19. It will allow participants to immerse themselves in the world of the Ballet National de Marseille by training with Alida Bergakker, a member of the BNM company. In March, the Afrofusion workshop offers the opportunity to take a class with dancers from the acclaimed South African dance company Moving into Dance Trust.
Van Cleef & Arpels has a long relationship with the world of dance. Louis Arpels, one of the brand’s founders, was a lover of ballet and would often take his nephew, Claude, to the Opera Garnier. In the early 1940s, Van Cleef released its first gem-embossed ballerina pins, which the brand continues to sell to this day. Arpels then met renowned choreographer and co-founder of the New York City Ballet, George Balanchine, in the ’50s; it is said that the pair’s shared love of precious stones inspired Balanchine’s Jewels. Van Cleef has maintained its strong connection to the world of dance in the 21st century, supporting both festivals and institutions, like the Croisements Festival in China. Dance Reflections is an extension of this long-standing relationship between the luxury jewelry brand and the art form.
Dancers from (LA)HORDE Ballet National De Marseille performing Age of Content.
The full Dance Reflections schedule is here, where you can also register for the workshops.
