To have fun, to be funny, to make fun of. Fun Times explores the various meanings of the word “fun”, from a tragicomic perspective that mirrors our ambivalent era, in which we don’t know any more whether to laugh or cry.
After fantasia and Blast!, this is Ruth Child’s first group piece. In Fun Times, she pays particular attention to sound – as in her previous creations – in a renewed collaboration with Stéphane Vecchione. Here, the voice will be the guest of honour. The choreography will be intimately linked to it through a continuous collage of choreographic, musical and emotional motifs.
Lyrical, absurd or cynical, Fun Times uses voices and bodies to sing, laugh and cry endlessly. What emerges from this tragicomic loop? In this grey area, where contradictions no longer find words but are expressed through sound and movement, Ruth Childs and her acolytes dissect feelings by staging these strange ambiguities. By taming this turmoil, Fun Times opens up new dimensions, juggling hope and despair in an attempt to get through it together, as best we can.

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