Ruth Childs & Lucinda Childs

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 various choreographers and directors including Foofwa d’Imobilité, La Ribot, Gilles Jobin, Massimo Furlan, Marco Berrettini and Yasmine Hugonnet. In 2014 she founded her own company Scarlett’s and creates dance and performance works as well as music. Her first stage piece, The Goldfish and the Inner Tube (2018), was created in collaboration with Stéphane Vecchione. She then went on to create two solo works fantasia (2019) and Blast! (2022). Since 2021 she has collaborated with the sculptor Cécile Bouffard on an evolving performance project called Delicate People. Since 2015 she is also working on a re-creation and revival project of the early works of her aunt, the American choreographer Lucinda Childs. Ruth Childs is currently one of the artists in residence at Arsenic in Lausanne and the associate artist at CCN2-Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble (2023-2024).

Born in 1940, Lucinda Childs began her choreographic career in 1963 at the Judson Dance Theater in New York. Trained, among others, by Merce Cunningham, she became one of the leaders of American postmo- dern dance in the 1970s. She created her own company in 1973 and soon after collaborated as a choreographer and performer with Bob Wilson and Philip Glass for the opera Einstein on the Beach. Lucinda Childs has collaborated with many composers and visual artists, including John Adams and Frank Gehry. Particularly, in 1979, she choreo- graphed Dance, on music by Philip Glass, with a film/ set by Sol Lewitt. Since 1981, Lucinda Childs has often been invited to create choreographies for major dance companies. Since 1992, she has often collaborated with presti- gious opera houses by choreographing repertoire or contemporary creations. She has received numerous awards and honors throughout her career. In 2004, she rose to the rank of Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters of France. In 2017, she received two awards for all of her work: The Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale and the Samuel J. Scripps /American Dance Festival Award. She also received the DANCE magazine award in december 2022.