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Ruth
Childs

Photo: Gregory Batardon

Fun Times

Premiere

October the 30th to November the 3rd, 2024, Arsenic-Centre d’art scénique contemporain Lausanne

Cast & Credits

Choreography in collaboration with the dancers : Ruth Childs
Dance/performance : Bryan Campbell, Ruth Childs, Karine Dahouindji, Cosima Grand, Ha Kyoon Larcher
Technical direction and light design : Joana Oliveira
Research and sound design : Stéphane Vecchione
Assistant : Flow Marie
Costumes : Tara Mabiala
Scenography : Mélissa Rouvinet
Outside eye : (tbc)
Vocal Coach : Bertille Puissat

Production : Scarlettt’s
Production déléguée, administration, diffusion : Tutu production – Lise Leclerc et Cécilia Lubrano

Coproductions :
Pavillon-ADC Genève, Arsenic-Centre d’art scénique contemporain Lausanne, Atelier de Paris/CDCN, CCN2 Grenoble, centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie dans le cadre du dispositif Accueil-studio/ministère de la Culture, DR by Van Cleef & Arpels

Residencies :
Montpellier Danse dans le cadre de l’accueil en résidence à l’Agora, cité internationale de la danse, avec le soutien de la Fondation BNP Paribas.

Ruth Childs is the associated artist at the CCN DE GRENOBLE, as part of the system supported by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication (2023-2024).

 

Scarlett’s/Ruth Childs benefits from a joint support contract from the City of Geneva/Canton of Geneva/Pro Helvetia (2024-2026).

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Drawings ©Ruth Childs

Fun Times will be a tragicomic dance for five dancers including myself, and my first ensemble piece.

 

As the title suggests, Fun Times will stage different semantic variations of the notion (the word) of fun. The piece stems from the rather primitive, genuine experience of having fun together or being funny together, and, conversely, of being sad together or making fun of something together.  How can these shared experiences be translated choreographically and vocally, in their raw or complex states, is one of the questions I aim to address.

 

My desire to work on the tragicomic is also to be understood in the context of the ambivalence of our times, in which we no longer know whether to laugh or cry.

Ruth Childs

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Blast!

Premiere

August 27-31, 2022, Pavillon de la dance/ADC, in the frame of La Bâtie Festival, Geneva

Cast & Credits

Choreography/Performance : Ruth Childs
Technical direction and light design: : Joana Oliveira
Sound design and research : Stéphane Vecchione
Artistic Collaboration : Bryan Campbell
Outside Eye : Cécile Bouffard
Costumes : Coco Petitpierre
Dressmaker : Anne Tesson, Coralie Chauvin
Coaching : Michèle Gurtner

Production, administration, diffusion :
Tutu production – Lise Leclerc and Cécilia Lubrano
Coproductions : Pavillon  ADC – Geneva (CH), La Bâtie-Festival Geneva, Arsenic- Centre d’art scénique contemporain Lausanne, Atelier de Paris/CDCN, CCN de Tours / Thomas Lebrun (dans le cadre de l’accueil studio), Centre chorégraphique national de Rillieux-la-Pape, direction Yuval PICK, A-CDCN (Les Hivernales – CDCN d’Avignon, La Manufacture – CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux · La Rochelle, L’échangeur – CDCN Hauts-de-France,  Le Dancing CDCN Dijon Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Chorège CDCN, Le Pacifique – CDCN Grenoble – Auvergne – Rhône-Alpes, Touka Danses – CDCN Guyane, Atelier de Paris / CDCN, Le Gymnase CDCN Roubaix – Hauts-de-France, POLE-SUD CDCN / Strasbourg, La Place de la Danse – CDCN Toulouse / Occitanie, La Maison CDCN Uzès Gard Occitanie, La Briqueterie CDCN du Val-de-Marne)

Residencies : Lo Studio – performing arts centre – Arbedo- Castione/Bellinzona – Switzerland

Supports : Pro Helvetia fondation Suisse pour la culture, fondation Stanley Thomas Johnson

Thanks to : Adèle Ottiger et Théâtre Sévelin 36 Lausanne, Jérôme Richer, Odds Bodkin , Lou Forster, Dominique Dardant, Leila Chakroun , Florence Magni , Susan Childs, Edward Childs, Marco Berrettini, Daisy Philips

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Photos ©Marie Magnin

Blast! is based on my observations of how humans express themselves. If my previous creation fantasia invoked sensations and movements linked to my own intimate memory, this new solo Blast! is a study, panorama, or re-appropriation of bodies, focusing on the painful, suffering, strange, explosive, and violent body. For some time now, I have felt the need to respond to violence by embodying and transforming it in my work. Not necessarily my own violence, but the violence that surrounds us, traverses the history of humanity, haunts us with imagery and stories, the violence of our imagination or our nightmares. In parallel to a study on expressivity, two intuitive concepts are at the heart of this new project: one is musical and the other spatial. These concepts have a meditative or calming aspect and serve as a juxtaposition to the intensity of the movement, or maybe even an antidote. Together, they both could either contain the energy or release it.

Ruth Childs

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“Au festival de La Bâtie à Genève, deux reines de la nuit au destin contraire.”
Le Temps, par Alexandre Demidoff, 30 août 2022.

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“Le Cri de Munch incarné viscéralement par Ruth Childs.”
L’oeil d’Olivier, par Olivier Frégaville-Gratian d’Amore, 31 août 2022.

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Delicate People

Projet au long cours 2021

Credits

Ruth Childs/Cécile Bouffard

Coproduction : Centre culturel suisse. Paris (CCS)
Part of the crossed-residency program of the Centre culturel suisse. Paris between French and Swiss artists, in partnership with La Becque, La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland.
Residencies : L’Arsenic, La Becque, Le Grütli – Centre de Production et de Diffusion des Arts vivants
Thanks to : Léopoldine Turbat

Administration, diffusion :
Tutu production – Lise Leclerc et Cécilia Lubrano

Photos ©Marie Magnin et Dorothée Thébert-Filliger

Ruth Childs and Cécile Bouffard started the project Delicate People in 2021 aiming to combine their respective disciplines, dance and sculpture. Delicate People is a series of vignettes dealing with figures and motifs of disturbing identities and fine-tuned movements. Both artists cultivate intuition and indeterminancy, fostering suspension of judgment and disruption in form. During their first work session at La Becque, in partnership with L’Arsenic, five initial forms were created to fit Ruth’s body.

Cécile’s work is an invitation to self-projection: an outline incites a grip, a curve a gesture. Her sculptures, arranged with folkloric motifs, call for the recognition of a certainty that can tip over into fragility as soon as the viewpoint is shifted. In a digressive logic, Childs works with the sculptures to create rhythmic patterns, traversing movements, figures and affects suggesting stories nourished by references common to both artists.

Together they seek to design a wandering object, to create a space of emancipation as much in the narrative structure as in the production method.

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Presse

“Delicate People, sculpture vivante.”
Zone Critique, par Clara Colson, 2 octore 2023.

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fantasia

Creation 2019

Cast & Credits

Choreography/Performance: Ruth Childs
Technical direction and light design: Joana Oliveira
Sound design and research: Stéphane Vecchione
Choreographic eye: Maud Blandel
Outside eye: Nadia Lauro
Costumes: Cécile Delanoë

Production: Scarlett’s
Delagated production and diffusion: Tutu production – Lise Leclerc
Coproduction:  ADC-Genève, Arsenic, Lausanne, Atelier de Paris / CDCN
Supports: Tanzhaus Zürich

Supports : Pro Helvetia fondation Suisse pour la culture, Loterie Romande, Fondation Nestlé pour l’Art, SIS Fondation suisse des artistes interprètes ou executants, Fondation Ernst Göhner, Fonds des programmateurs de Reso – Réseau Danse Suisse,Tanzhaus Zürich, The Floor NYC.

Thanks to: Théâtre Sévelin Lausanne, Servette Music

Avignon 2022 tour support : Fondation Corymbo

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Photos ©Marie Magnin

Lately, during my choreographic research, I started noticing how familiar tunes make me do spontaneous and surprising things: my body finds postures dynamics, and movements without making a conscious effort. Something about finding the unknown through the known has captivated me.

My first creation The Goldfish and the Inner Tube, in collaboration with Stéphane Vecchione, was an explosive exploration including sound, materials and bodies. For fantasia, my choreographic research focuses on the body and its musicality, delving into the intimate layers of my physical and emotional memories triggered by the classical music I listened to as a child. 

Stepping into an empty space, a white room, I invoke, play, dialogue, embody and fight with these musical recollections, using color to punctuate and organize them, in an abstract auto portrait. My body, shifting from projection screen, to human figure, to animal-like creature, to musical instrument, or to simple vibration, takes on, conducts, and questions the notion of what is intimate and what is collective. 

Ruth Childs

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La danseuse et performeuse présente fantasia, sa première création solo
Rendez-vous culture RTS, par Julie Evard, 28/10/2019

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The Goldfish and the Inner Tubes

Creation 2018

Cast & Credits

Conception, performance, music: Ruth Childs et Stéphane Vecchione
Light design: Joana Oliveira
Technical research: Victor Roy
Dramaturgy: Michèle Pralong
Production: Scarlett’s
Delegated production and diffusion: Tutu production – Lise Leclerc
Coproductions: ADC-Genève, L’Atelier de Paris-Carolyn Carlson CDC – Paris, Arsenic-Lausanne.

Supports: Affaires culturelles du Canton de Vaud, Fondation Nestlé pour l’Art, Fondation Stanley Thomas Johnson, Fondation suisse pour la culture Pro Helvetia, Fonds d’encouragement à l’emploi des intermittents genevois (FEEIG),la Loterie Romande, la Ville de Lausanne

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Photos: © Marie Magnin

With this performance project we offer a collection of situations which we construct and deconstruct in front of an audience using our bodies, objects, materials, sounds, space and a given time. We are workers, performers, spectators and even objects, thus constantly playing with our functions.
As artists we propose a modest, quirky and curious investigation rather than a firm statement, offering a detailed observational mode of situations going from the most mundane to the most fascinating. We are looking for openings, and surprises, for the ambiguity between the abstract and the absurd, the body and the object, the spectator and the performer, the man and the woman, the musician and his music, the mirror and the window, lightness and despair, coexistence and autonomy, and generosity and mistrust. We also intend to forget momentarily our own labels of dancer/performer (Ruth Childs) and musician/performer (Stéphane Vecchione.) We seek an exchangeable, ephemeral and recyclable status.

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Calico Mingling / Katema / Reclining Rondo / Particular Reel

Creation 2017

Cast & Credits

Particular Reel, Katema

Choreography: Lucinda Childs
Dance: Ruth Childs
Assistant: Ty Boomershine
Light design: Joana Oliveira
Costumes: Severine Besson

Calico Mingling, Reclining Rondo

Choreography: Lucinda Childs
Dance: Ruth Childs, Anne Delahaye or Stéphanie Bayle, Anja Schmidt, Pauline Wassermann
Assistant: Ty Boomershine
Light design: Joana Oliveira
Costumes: Severine Besson

Production: Scarlett’s
Delegated Production:  Tutu Production
Coproduction: La Bâtie Festival de Genève,Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain, Lausanne

Financial support City of Geneva, Pro Helvetia, Fondation Suisse des Artistes Interprètes, Fond Mécénat SIG, Fondation Nestlé pour l’art, Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Corodis, Loterie Romande.

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Photos: © Mhedi Benkler

In 2015, Lucinda Childs transmitted three of her iconic solos from the 60’ to Ruth Childs. This first artistic encounter gave birth to the recreation of Pastime (1963), Carnation (1964), and Museum Piece (1965).  Two years after her first successful collaboration, Ruth Childs continues to revive her aunt’s dances through a second series of performances created in the 70s: Particular Reel (1973), Calico Mingling (1973), Reclining Rondo (1975) and Katema (1978). This program focuses on the choreographer’s aesthetic transition prior to the creation of her now-famous Dance show in 1979.

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Pastime, Carnation, Museum Piece

Creation 2016

Cast & Credits

Pastime, Carnation and Museum piece

Choreograpy: Lucinda Childs
Dance: Ruth Childs
Light design: Eric Wurtz

Calico Mingling (film)

Choregraphy: Lucinda Childs
Film maker: Babette Mangolte
Dancers: Susan Brody, Lucinda Childs, Nancy Fuller et Judy Padow
Place: Robert Moses Plaza, Fordham University

Katema (film)

Choregraphie and dance: Lucinda Childs
Photography: Renato Berta
Place: Kunsthaus Zürich

Production: Scarlett’s
Coproduction: ADC – Association pour la danse contemporaine
Supports: La Ville de Genève, le Canton de Genève, Stanley Johnson, la Loterie Romande, la Corodis, la Fondation Nestlé pour l’Art, la Fondation Vuitton et Pro Helvetia

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Photos: © Grégory Batardon

Lucinda Childs is one of post-modern dance’s pre-eminent icons, and a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater. She also happens to be my aunt. We decided to work on a revival project of three solos that she choreographed and performed herself in the 1960’s at the Judson Dance Theater in New York: PastimeCarnation and Museum Piece.

We revived these three solos to be as close as possible to the original versions, knowing that there are no film archives of her solos during the Judson period. Lucinda gave me very exact choreographic indications. She shared anecdotes and archives from that period. She then left me with room to explore my own way to perform these 3 solos.

With the exception of Carnation, these solos are quite unknown and have never been presented outside of the USA. This work of revival, handing-down and re-creation is essential because it allows a new generation of audiences to discover these historic pieces.

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Biography

British-American dancer and choreographer Ruth Childs was born in 1984 in London. She grew up in the United States where she studied dance and music. In 2003 she moved to Geneva to finish her dance training with the Ballet Junior de Genève. Following this, she started working with many choreographers and directors including Foofwa d’Imobilité, La Ribot, Gilles Jobin, Massimo Furlan, Marco Berrettini and Yasmine Hugonnet. Since 2015, she is also working on a re-creation and revival project of the early works of her the aunt, the American choreographer Lucinda Childs.

In 2014 she founded her company Scarlett’s to develop her own work through dance, performance, and music. Scarlett’s favors intimate and collaborative artistic processes, cultivating intuition and the indefinable. In 2016 the state of Geneva awarded her a scholarship and research residency in Berlin of 6 months to develop her own work. Her first stage piece in collaboration with Stéphane Vecchione, The Goldfish and the Inner Tube, premiered in April 2018.

She then creates fantasia, her first solo at the ADC, Geneva in October 2019. Then in 2021 she receives a scholarship from the Centre culturel suisse.Paris and La Becque (La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland) to collaborate with Cécile Bouffard on a research project called Delicate People. In 2022 she creates her second solo Blast! at the Pavillon ADC during the Bâtie festival in Geneva. Ruth is currently one of the artists in residence at Arsenic in Lausanne and the associated artist at CCN2-Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble (2023-2024).

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Ruth Childs, entretien dans “Ma Culture”

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Agenda

March 14-17, 2024
Blast! 
Le Programme Commun, Arsenic, Lausanne (CH)

April 8, 2024
Blast! 
Le Gymnase/ CDCN, Roubaix (FR)

May 3, 2024
Delicate People
Galerie Krone, dans le cadre de la Fête de la danse, Bienne (CH)

May 4, 2024
Delicate People
Jardin d’ERACOM dans le cadre de la Fête de la danse, Lausanne (CH)

May 25, 2024
Delicate People
La Becque, La Tour-de-Peilz (CH)

June 8, 2024
Blast! 
La Maison/ CDCN, Uzès (FR)

June 18, 2024
Blast! 
Danza Estate, Bergamo (IT)

September 28, 2024
Delicate People
CCN2 , Grenoble (FR)

October 30 – November 3, 2024 PREMIERE
Fun Times
Arsenic, Lausanne (CH)

November 18, 2024
fantasia (excerpts)
Danse dans les Nymphéas, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris (FR)

November 21, 22, 2024
Fun Times
CDCN/Atelier de Paris (FR)

27, 28 novembre 2024
Blast!
Temple Allemand ABC & ADN Neuchâtel, La Chaux-de-Fonds (CH)

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