(Switzerland)
The guest performance is realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture.
In fantasia, choreographer Ruth Childs turns to the classical music of her childhood as a portal into the intimate layers of physical and emotional memory. Stepping into a white, empty space, she invokes, plays, dialogues, embodies, and fights with these musical recollections, using colour to punctuate and organise them into an abstract auto portrait. Her body shifts fluidly — from projection screen to human figure, from animal-like creature to musical instrument, to simple vibration — taking on and questioning the boundary between what is intimate and what is collective. The music in “Fantasia” is Childs’ own collection of familiar melodies, sometimes treated as a ready-made, sometimes directed live by her voice and body, and sometimes transformed. It is based on several familiar tunes, a mixture of different forms or styles – an overall reflection on how to use classical music in a contemporary context.
British-American dancer, performer, and choreographer Ruth Childs trained in the United States and Geneva, before going on to collaborate with internationally renowned choreographers such as La Ribot, Gilles Jobin, and Yasmine Hugonnet. In 2014 she founded her company Scarlett’s, dedicated to developing her own work through dance, performance, and music, with a focus on intimate and collaborative artistic processes. Her solo fantasia premiered in Geneva in 2019, followed by her second solo Blast!, which received the Prix suisse des arts de la scène in 2022 for an outstanding choreographic production. Since 2015 she has also been working on a revival project of the early works of her aunt, the American choreographer Lucinda Childs. Her work has been presented worldwide – from Théâtre de la Ville in Paris to Impulstanz in Vienna.
The international programme of the International festival for contemporary dance and performance “Antistatic” 2026 is organised by the “Brain Store Project” Foundation and the “Nomad Dance” Association with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, Sofia Municipality – Cultural Events Calendar, the research project “DanceMap”, funded by the “Horizon Europe” programme of the European Union, DANCE ON TOUR Austria – a project by “Tanzquartier” Vienna in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, and the Administration of the National Cultural Fund of Romania, as well as in partnership with RCCA Toplocentrala and “Derida” Stage.
Ticket prices: With care and understanding of the different situations our audience members find themselves in, in 2026 Antistatic continues the “pay what you can” pricing policy for all tickets to the events in the festival programme with an entry. Each spectator can choose how much to pay for their ticket from three price categories – 11, 15 and 20 euro.