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Property from the Estate of Ann Reinking
Lot 68
A SAPPHIRE AND DIAMOND NECKLACE
6 December 2021, 11:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$16,562.50 inc. premium
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A SAPPHIRE AND DIAMOND NECKLACE
Designed as a line of oval-shaped sapphires alternating with pairs of round brilliant-cut diamonds; estimated total diamond weight: 6.00 carats; mounted in platinum; internal circumference: 15 in.
Footnotes
All That Jazz: The Jewelry of Ann Reinking
Graceful and exuberant, the dancing of Ann Reinking seemed effortlessly cool. One of Broadway's brightest stars, a Tony Award-winning choreographer, as well as a dancer, singer and actress, Ann Reinking had a career as exciting as the plotline of a musical.
Born in Seattle in 1949, Reinking always knew she would be a dancer and booked her first professional ballet role by age twelve. At nineteen, she moved to New York City and made her Broadway debut as part of the chorus in Cabaret followed by Coco and Pippin. She told the New York Times that during auditions for Over Here, choreographer Patricia Birch stood up, pointed at her, and yelled "That's the girl!" a moment that catapulted her to stardom. She became one of Bob Fosse's most important dancers, his muse and protegee, and briefly his romantic partner.
Fosse was a difficult and brilliant man whose dance style is marked by slow, isolated movements of the hips and shoulders, extreme body angles, turned in shoulders and toes, and expressive hands. "It's extremely sensual," Reinking said. "It requires severe control and extreme freedom. If you go for one and not the other, you're not doing it right." The long-limbed Reinking mastered his difficult angles, making them look easy. Bebe Neuwirth said, "She simply doesn't dance like anyone else."
Fosse's Chicago looms large in Reinking's life. In 1977 she replaced Gwen Verdon, Fosse's recently separated wife, in the lead role of Roxie Hart—ironically, a chorus girl who kills her lover. Verdon's and Reinking's relationship was not a dramatic love triangle; they worked together over the years on many projects keeping Fosse's incredible legacy alive. "Annie taking over had extraordinary symmetry," Ms. Verdon later recalled. "Pieces simply fell into place." Two decades after her first turn, she returned to Chicago for the 1996 revival as Roxie Hart, but this time she was also the choreographer. Adding a modern spin on Fosse's work, her choreography won her a Tony award. The production is still active and is one of Broadway's longest-running shows.
With her piercing blue eyes, long sleek hair, and signature husky voice, Reinking made her film debut playing a thinly veiled version of herself in Fosse's semi-autobiographical movie All that Jazz (1979). She was remarkable in the role of Grace Farrell in Annie (1983), Oliver Warbucks's secretary who instigates the adoption. Dancing across the screen in diaphanous gowns, she exudes pure exuberance and romance that steal every scene.
Jewelry became a staple of her glamorous red-carpet looks in the late 1970s and 1980s, and we are pleased to be offering many of those pieces here. When presenting at the 1983 Academy Awards, she wore a pair of Tiffany sapphire and diamond earrings and a sapphire and diamond necklace [lots 69 and 68]. She favored diamonds and sapphires, also wearing her Tiffany sapphire and diamond ring in publicity photos [lot 73]. An impressive double-row diamond necklace by Hammerman Brothers was a red-carpet showstopper [lot 92]. The Cartier ruby and diamond necklace would easily have been the perfect premiere jewel [lot 90]. Her pieces are also imminently wearable, such as the gold opal necklace [lot 74] that she wore to the premiere of Micki & Maude, the 1984 movie she starred in with Dudley Moore. This is a rare opportunity to own jewelry owned and worn by an unparalleled star.
Ann Reinking passed away in 2020 at the age of seventy-one. Remarking on her passing, her friend, fellow dancer and choreographer, Christopher Dean aptly said, "The lights on Broadway are forever more dim this morning and there is one less star in the sky."
Courtesy of Sarah Davis
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