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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels

For dance enthusiasts, New York City in the 1960s was the place to be, with George Balanchine and his New York City Ballet moving from strength to strength. In 1962, Balanchine premiered his two-act version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, choreographed to music by Felix Mendelssohn. The year 1967 saw the release of a film of that production, starring the great Edward Villella as Oberon and Balanchine’s muse Suzanne Farrell as Titania. Indeed, increasingly dance was captured on film. Alwin Nikolaïs’s multimedia film Fusion was made in 1967, and 1970 brought a film of Maurice Béjart’s stripped-down The Rite of Spring (1959). In 1986, the swimming coach and researcher Anne Frémy was the first to put ballet into a swimming pool, when she took dancers for a residency in Angers and created Waterproof. Van Cleef has always supported dance, and these four dance moments are now available for viewing. —Elena Clavarino