Art, in all its forms, has a way of moving people. A painting can take your breath away. A piece of music can unlock an emotion long forgotten. There are moments when we encounter a work and feel, almost without warning, that it understands us. Dance does this differently. It speaks through the body via gesture and rhythm. This language unfolded across New York this season as Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels returned over the weekend and is scheduled to run till 21 March 2026. Spanning 20 productions across institutions including New York City Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Guggenheim and Park Avenue Armory, the festival offers a sweeping view of contemporary choreographic creations.
For Serge Laurent, director of dance and culture programmes at Van Cleef & Arpels, the initiative represents more than patronage. “We didn’t want to be just a logo at the bottom of a poster,” he says. “We wanted to develop a vision.” He adds that Dance Reflections is based on a very simple concept. “Our idea was to lean on three essential values – creation, because this maison is a place built on that and dance is an extraordinary aspect of it; transmission, because spreading know-how is essential for us and lastly, education,” he shares.
The opening evening at New York City Center set the framework. The Lyon Opera Ballet presented Merce Cunningham’s Biped – first staged in 1999 – alongside Christos Papadopoulos’s Mycelium (2023). One anchored in Cunningham’s structural precision and early experiments with digital scenography, the other shaped by a study of collective, almost cellular movement. Watching the opening performances, Laurent noted a resonance that extends beyond style. “There is this precision of movement. If you look at how our artisans work and how they handle every detail, there is a common language even if the translation is different. It is an artistic approach.”
Although established as a formal platform in 2020, Dance Reflections builds on a relationship between Van Cleef & Arpels and dance that dates back to the 1920s. The connection crystallised in the late 1940s when Claude Arpels met George Balanchine. Their shared fascination with gemstones led to Jewels, which premiered in New York in 1967. A three-act ballet structured around emeralds, rubies and diamonds, it is widely regarded as the first full-length abstract version of the dance form. That encounter also set a precedent. “George Balanchine decided to create Jewels on his own,” Laurent explains. “It wasn’t Claude Arpels who asked him to make something related to jewellery.” The same principle guides Dance Reflections today. No choreographer is commissioned to translate gemstones into movement. Instead, the relationship between the maison and dance is one of mutual respect, where inspiration flows freely rather than by directive.
Although it does raise the question – why contemporary dance and not classical repertory – especially because the house’s jewels depict otherwise. “What is the evolution of dance today? It’s the contemporary form,” Laurent explains. “When you choose to support it, you don’t avoid its past. But the idea is not to connect our creations with the dance we support. They are two different paths that respect each other.”
Today, the programme supports major repertory revivals and new commissions through partnerships with leading performing arts institutions. That commitment extends beyond the stage to education. “For each festival we organise talks, masterclasses and workshops. In New York, we have opened a pop-up dance centre for a month, offering workshops everyday for professional dancers as well as amateurs and children,” adds Laurent. For him, these workshops are not ancillary but essential. “If you attend a dance workshop at least once in your life, you’ll understand what it means for a choreographer to create.”
In the weeks ahead, that balance is visible on stage. At BAM, Dancing with Bob pairs Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset with Cunningham’s long-absent Travelogue. At the Perelman Performing Arts Center, Benjamin Millepied’s Reflections: A Triptych revisits an ongoing collaboration with the maison. Lucinda Childs’s Early Works unfolds within The Guggenheim’s rotunda, bringing postmodern precision into the present.
At a time when the relevance of traditional performing arts is occasionally questioned in popular culture – most recently by actor Timothée Chalamet, who suggested that forms like ballet and opera are at risk of becoming niche – initiatives such as Dance Reflections take on added resonance. Rather than positioning dance as something to be preserved out of obligation, the festival frames it as a discipline that continues to evolve. By bringing contemporary choreography to major institutions and opening up the field through talks and workshops, it reinforces the idea that dance remains a vital language of artistic expression.
This article was originally published in the March 2026 issue of Vogue Arabia
