Six years ago, Natalie Portman helped design a Richard Mille timepiece. The RM19-01 featured the Black Swan star’s favourite graphic motif, a spider, and was sold for charity benefiting Free The Children (now WE charity).
Six years later, her husband Benjamin Millepied also worked with Richard Mille but instead of designing a watch, he designed a dance performance for the brand’s new collection. For someone whose named literally means a thousand feet, this cannot be more apt.
![](https://voguesg.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/22022147/Richard-mille-rm72-01-chronograph-benjamin-millepied-thomas-roussel-within-8-2020-vogue-sg.jpg)
Entitled WITHIN, this singular production had Millepied going behind the lens for a change, as he worked with composer Thomas Roussel on a spell-binding modern dance routine set in the raw, wind-swept desert wilderness of Joshua Tree South California.
![](https://voguesg.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/22021309/Richard-mille-rm72-01-chronograph-benjamin-millepied-thomas-roussel-within-3-2020-vogue-sg.jpg)
Meanwhile, the music was performed by 50 musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra and recorded at the time-honoured St. Luke’s Church.
The piece which Millepied calls “impressionistic and mysterious” is set to Roussel’s “dreamy sounds that match the fantastic images,” seeking to fuse technical with pure feeling.
![](https://voguesg.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/22021310/Richard-mille-rm72-01-chronograph-benjamin-millepied-thomas-roussel-within-5-2020-vogue-sg.jpg)
Here, dance fuses with time and space, emulsified by the score which is built upon the steady tick-tock rhythm but with vitality and energy. In just under two minutes, the duo transports us to a land where time stands still and nothing matters except the unstructured and organic pas-de-deux between two human beings.
This isn’t Millepied’s first collaboration with the watch and jewellery space. In 2012 the world-renowned choreographer and former star dancer with the New York City Ballet began a three-part production with French jewellery maison Van Cleef & Arpels.
![](https://voguesg.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/22023139/Richard-mille-rm72-01-chronograph-benjamin-millepied-thomas-roussel-within-10-2020-vogue-sg.jpg)
Millepied is also the artistic director of L.A. Dance Project. And In August 2020 he launched LADP Digital, a mobile app that connects dance enthusiasts through group workout sessions and other web-based content.
Echoing the same power, ingenuity and artistic quality, Richard Mille’s RM72-01 Lifestyle In-House Chronograph weaves tradition with modernity. Yet it is no ordinary chronograph, as it debuts a new movement construction which improves on precision while remaining reasonably thin. As such, the RM72-01 could be worn by women as well as men.
![](https://voguesg.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/22021309/Richard-mille-rm72-01-chronograph-benjamin-millepied-thomas-roussel-within-2-2020-vogue-sg.jpg)
Most impressively, the movement was conceived, designed and produced at the brand’s own workshop in Les Breuleux, Switzerland, signalling a sort of coming-of-age for the ultra-luxe independent watch brand. As this attests to the enriched savoir-faire inside the Richard Mille manufacture, it also makes WITHIN a doubly meaningful milestone.
Watch WITHIN by Benjamin Millepied and Thomas Roussel for Richard Mille here