Ruth Childs - Scarlett's
fantasia
Co-presented with L’Alliance New York
January 11, 8:30pm
January 12, 8pm
Ruth Childs returns to NYC for her second stateside presentation in 2025, fantasia. During her choreographic research, Childs began noticing how familiar tunes made her do spontaneous and surprising things: her body found postures, dynamics, and movements without conscious effort. Something about discovering the unknown through the known captivated her. fantasia focuses on the body and its musicality, delving into the intimate layers of physical and emotional memories triggered by the classical music the artist listened to as a child. She invokes, plays, dialogues, embodies, and fights with these musical recollections, using color to punctuate and organize them in an abstract self-portrait. Her 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.
Choreography/Performance: Ruth Childs
Light Design: Joana Oliveira
Sound Design & Research: Stéphane Vecchione
Choreographic Eye: Maud Blandel
Outside Eye: Nadia Lauro
Costumes: Cécile Delanoë
Production, Administration, Diffusion: Lise Leclerc & Cecília Lubrano
Technical Director: Rodolphe Martin
Association pour la Danse Contemporaine – Geneva,
Arsenic, Lausanne, Atelier de Paris / CDCN
Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia/ Loterie Romande/
Nestlé Foundation for the Arts/ Fondation suisse des
artistes interprètes SIS/ Ernst Göhner foundation/
Fonds des programmateurs of Reso – Réseau Danse
Suisse (with support from Swiss Arts Council Pro
Helvetia)/ Tanzhaus Zürich/ The Floor NYC/ Corodis/
Canton of Geneva
Scarlett’s/Ruth Childs benefits from a joint support
contract from the City of Geneva/Canton of Geneva/
Pro Helvetia (2024-2026)
“With unsual poetry and spontaneous commitment, the performer is both conductor and music box.”
Sceneweb, Christophe Candoni
“Ruth Childs’ performance of her fantasia, a new creation, gave me a “Behold” moment, a chance to feel
the emotion of witnessing something unique”
Best American Poetry, Paul Tracy Danison
“By using these melodies that everyone recognizes even if they can’t name them, she provokes a very
organic reaction. Even when the dance is minimal, the music steps up. And vice versa. Brilliant.”
toutelaculture, Amelie Blaustein Niddam
