Ruth Childs

The Anglo-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 complete her dance training at the Ballet Junior de Genève. She has since worked with numerous choreographers and directors, including Foofwa d’Imobilité, La Ribot, Gilles Jobin, Massimo Furlan, Marco Berrettini and Yasmine Hugonnet. Since 2015, she has been revisiting the early works of her aunt, American choreographer Lucinda Childs.

In 2014, she founded the association Scarlett’s to develop her own artistic practice at the intersection of dance, performance and music. Scarlett’s encourages both collaborative and intimate approaches grounded in intuition and openness. In 2016, the Canton of Geneva awarded her a grant and a six-month research residency in Berlin to further develop her work.

In 2018, she created her first stage work, The Goldfish and the Inner Tube, in collaboration with Stéphane Vecchione. Her first solo piece, fantasia, premiered at ADC Geneva in October 2019. In 2021, she received a grant from the Centre culturel suisse. Paris and La Becque (La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland) to collaborate with Cécile Bouffard on a research project titled delicate people. In 2022, she created her second solo, Blast!, which was awarded the Swiss Performing Arts Award the same year, recognizing an outstanding choreographic production. Her first group piece, Fun Times, was created in 2024.

Her work has been presented internationally, including at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, the Bienal de Danza de Cali, ImPulsTanz in Vienna and Crossing the Line in New York.
Ruth is currently an artist in residence at L’Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain in Lausanne.