Blast!
Ruth Childs
Schedule
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Friday, November 14, 2025
North American Premiere
Duration: 55 minutes
In her solo performance Blast!, Ruth Childs crafts a choreographed dialogue with the percussive sound design of Stéphane Vecchione, weaving its rhythms and ruptures together with movement into a choreographic circle. Drawing from her observations of how humans express themselves, Childs confronts and interacts with representations of bodies that embody a terrible violence. What sounds, expressions, and words emerge from these bodies? Are they storytelling, ballad, poetry, or nonsense?
“The choreographer and dancer reinvents her stage presence in a punchy piece, with the strange flavor of a performance as unmissable as it is mysterious.” — Nathalie Yokel, La Terrasse
Co-Presented with the Chocolate Factory Theater
Blast! is presented in partnership with the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University where Ruth Childs will be in residence for the next academic year from September 2025-May 2026.
Venue
Ruth Childs
British-American dancer and performer 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 internationally known 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 aunt, the American choreographer Lucinda Childs.
In 2014 she founded her company, Scarlett’s, in order 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 6-month scholarship and research residency in Berlin 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 premiered fantasia, her first solo at the ADC, Geneva in October 2019 and then Blast! in 2022 at the Festival de la Bâtie in Geneva and Fun Times in 2024 at Arsenic in Lausanne. From 2023-2024 Ruth was the associated artist at the CCN2 Grenoble.
Ruth is currently one of the artists in residence at Arsenic in Lausanne and at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University.
Billing Credits
Choreography/Performance: Ruth Childs
Lighting design: Joana Oliveira
Sound design and research: Stéphane Vecchione
Artistic Collaboration: Bryan Campbell
Costume Design: Coco Petitpierre
Costume Production: Anne Tesson, Coralie Chauvin
Outside eye: Cécile Bouffard
Coaching: Michèle Gurtner
Production, administration, distribution: Lise Leclerc and Cecília Lubrano
Technical director: Rodolphe MartinProduction Credits
Pavillon ADC – Genève (CH), La Bâtie-Festival de Genève, 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)
With support from
Pro Helvetia fondation Suisse pour la culture / the Stanley Thomas Johnson foundation / the Lo Studio – Performing Arts Centre, Bellinzona – Switzerland / 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)Many thanks to
Adèle Ottiger and the Théâtre Sévelin 36 Lausanne, Jérôme Richer, Odds Bodkin, Lou Forster, Dominique Dardant, Leila Chakroun, Florence Magni, Susan Childs, Edward Childs, Marco Berrettini, Daisy PhilipsAbout the Chocolate Factory Theater
Founded in 2004, The Chocolate Factory Theater supports the creation of new work by dance, theater and interdisciplinary artists from its post-industrial facility in Long Island City, Queens. We encourage risk-taking and innovation within the experimental performing arts community by responding to artists’ needs with space, time, money and administrative support throughout their careers. As an artist-founded, artist-run institution – and one of the few remaining spaces wholly devoted to experimental performance in New York City – we believe that the ideas generated within our walls have the potential to improve the lives of New Yorkers, shape broader cultural movements, and inspire change.
Support for Crossing The Line
and The Wescustogo Foundation
Support for Blast!
L’Alliance New York’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the Support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Header Image: Blast! © Marie Magnin
Ruth Childs headshot: © Marie Magnin
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