Perfume

With you PARA | DISO l'essence de la danse, Greco and Scholten present a unique project in which the dance is linked to a fragrance. In close cooperation with Italian perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri (‘The Nose’) and well-known Dutch designers Joost van Bleiswijk and Kiki van Eijk, Greco and Scholten set out on a quest to capture paradise inside a small bottle. The result is: the infinite bliss of being, distilled in 30 milliliters.

The idea to create a perfume had been brewing with Greco and Scholten for some time. The first signs surfaced in an advertisement which spanned the centre spread of HELL magazine in 2006. In 2008, there followed a first experiment in the context of the performances of [purgatorio]: olfactory artist Maki Ueda placed the sweaty dance costumes in spirits and distilled the smell of the dance. As it turned out, this initial olfactory experiment was the upbeat to a larger-scale project: to create a dedicated perfume. In 2010, paradise presented itself as a theme and appeared to be as ephemeral and elusive as the dance itself. Nevertheless it was found that the smell of paradise comes closest to touching the soul, to the essence of the dance:

What does paradise smell like? Capturing the essence of paradise in a perfume is as simple as it is impossible. The smell of paradise is more than just something ‘nice’: the paradisiacal encompasses everything. Not just the arrival, but the whole journey, too. And it is that journey which Greco and Scholten have linked to the path that dance has travelled: the research on the perfume was driven by the search for l’ essence de la danse – in both senses of a perfume and a core value.

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A creation by Emio Greco | Pieter C. Scholten
Perfume Alessandro Gualtieri
Design Kiki van Eijk & Joost van Bleiswijk
Art director Isabelle Vigier

What does heaven smell like?

This perfume is more than just a wannahave and something that we just wanted to do sometime. It's a project that started already in 2003 and in 2010 finally reached its final stage. Here you can download the brochure and read the full story about this paradisiacal project.