Jewel in the crown: Gems aglitter at Brisbane Festival
A landmark Australian exclusive and world premiere, L.A. Dance Project’s contemporary ballet trilogy Gems will be presented in its entirety for the very first time at this year’s Brisbane Festival.
Like any French tourist who has just flown in, Benjamin Millepied is a bit jet lagged. We are chatting at Naldham House in Brisbane’s CBD ahead of a lunch organised in his honour – a lunch he will struggle to stay awake through. At one point in the proceedings, he rubs his eyes unabashedly and you get the feeling that a nice lie down can’t be far off.
Luckily, I get to chat to him prior to our luncheon, before he begins to fade. And despite his weariness, he appears ecstatic to be back Down Under. “I love this country,” Millepied says.
So much so that he has chosen Australia, more specifically Brisbane and even more specifically Brisbane Festival to premiere his re-tweaked masterpiece, a triple bill of contemporary ballet works known collectively as Gems. These works – Hearts & Arrows, Reflections and On The Other Side – have been seen around the world but never together on the one bill.
Brisbane will get all three in a world first and while two works are tweaked, the third, On The Other Side, is largely reworked and can almost be considered brand new. It features a suite of piano etudes by Philip Glass and eight dancers who ebb and flow between ensemble dancing, pas de deux, solos and groups of three or four.
This sustains choreographer Millepied’s high lyricism and emotional momentum through the ballet’s pensive conclusion. Pianist Yanfeng (Tony) Bai plays live for this piece.
Like all the works in Gems, this one is a kind of homage – to Emeralds in this case, one of the works in George Balanchine’s famous ballet Jewels. Instead of Jewels, though, we get Gems as a nod to Balanchine’s classic. While On The Other Side equates to Balanchine’s Emeralds, Hearts & Arrows relates to his Diamonds and Reflections to Rubies. Loosely speaking that is.
Hearts & Arrows, Reflections and On The Other Side have been seen around the world but never together on the one bill
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Millepied, 48, started his dancing career in New York City Ballet, a company known for its repertoire of Balanchine’s works, though he did not begin by founding a Balanchine-style company. He joined NYCB in 1995, becoming a principal dancer and performing many of Balanchine’s ballets before leaving to co-found his company, L.A. Dance Project, in 2011. He now spends his time between his home in Paris and Los Angeles.
Gems, an L.A. Dance Project work, will open Brisbane Festival and will run in the Playhouse at QPAC, September 4 to 7. This special event triple bill was lured to Brisbane by Louise Bezzina as one of her parting gifts before she leaves the role of Brisbane Festival artistic director and moves on to run Brisbane Powerhouse.
Attracting Millepied to Australia wasn’t difficult, though, since he loves it so much. He actually spent a year living in Sydney during the pandemic. He was here making a movie, Carmen, which he directed. It was filmed in Australia, with scenes set in the Mexican-US border region shot in the area around Broken Hill, NSW.
The film, a French-Australian co-production, used the region’s landscapes and red rocks to stand in for the Sonoran Desert during the pandemic, taking advantage of Australian tax incentives and travel exceptions. (Previous film experience includes choreographing and performing as a dancer in the 2010 movie Black Swan. He met his former wife, actor Natalie Portman, on set. He also choreographed the “sandwalk” in Dune.)
“Broken Hill?” I say trying to imagine a sophisticated Parisian in that tough outback town.
“I loved it,” Millepied says. “It was the perfect location for the authenticity of the film. I was in Broken Hill for weeks. It was fantastic.”
Mind you, the rest of the time he was based in Vaucluse in Sydney’s exclusive Eastern suburbs, which is not exactly doing it tough. He didn’t get to Brisbane on that trip but is happy to be here now to present a landmark Australian exclusive and world premiere of Gems.
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This bold contemporary ballet trilogy by L.A. Dance Project, in collaboration with luxury jewellery brand Van Cleef & Arpels, reimagines the spirit of Balanchine’s revolutionary Jewels through a modern lens.
Since 1896, Van Cleef & Arpels has maintained close ties with dance, inspiring many creations. A pivotal partnership between Claude Arpels and George Balanchine led to the masterpiece Jewels in 1967. Forty-five years later, Van Cleef & Arpels CEO Nicolas Bos and Millepied envisioned a new contemporary ballet continuing Jewels legacy. This led to Millepied’s trilogy, Gems.
Each chapter, Reflections, Hearts & Arrows and On the Other Side, serves as a contemporary counterpoint to Balanchine’s Rubies, Emeralds, and Diamonds. Together, they form a dazzling triptych of distinct works, each chapter inspired by the brilliance and character of its namesake gem.
The dancers in Hearts & Arrows will be accompanied by Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra – also playing the music of Philip Glass.
Reflections features more “jazzy” music, according to Millepied, using music by David Laing and this work also features pianist Yanfeng (Tony) Bai.
So what are these works about? Asking that question is always tricky in the world of contemporary dance. Millepied baulks at explaining away what he hopes will be experienced rather than analysed.
“There’s an array of emotions in these works,” he says. “It’s for people to experience. I want the dancers to respond in the moment and to be authentic and genuine and I want the audience to experience that too. We all respond to things in different ways. Everyone is different. So I would just say – respond in the moment. I don’t want to say too much.”
Millepied will let his work do the talking for him in the Playhouse where festival goers will witness something very special.
Balanchine, a Georgian-Armenian composer, died in 1983 but his memory lives on in Jewels and now, a little more obliquely, in Gems, which promises to be dazzling, if you’ll pardon the pun.
Gems plays the QPAC Playhouse, September 4-7.