CÉCILE BOUFFARD (FR, 1987) & RUTH CHILDS (UK/US, 1984)
Residency period: February-March 2021
During their cross-residency with the Centre Culturel Suisse, Ruth Childs and Cécile Bouffard initiated the project Delicate People, which aims to combine their respective practices, dance and sculpture. Delicate People is a series of vignettes dealing with figures and motifs of disturbing identities and fine-tuned movements. Each cultivating intuition and indefiniteness, they fostered in their research suspension of judgment and disturbance in form. During this first work session at La Becque, in partnership with L’Arsenic, five initial forms were designed to fit Ruth’s body.
Together they sought to design a drifting object, to create a space of emancipation as much in the narrative structure as in the production method.
Cécile’s work invites one to project oneself: an outline incites a grip, a curve a gesture. Arranged with folkloric signs, her sculptures call for the recognition of a certainty that can tip over into fragility as soon as the gaze is moved. In a digressive logic, Childs worked with the sculptures to create rhythmic patterns. This journey through movements, figures and affects clearly created narratives fuelled by common interests. This first working session revealed a desire to break free from a classical process of monstration. They then adopted an experimental approach to create several parts and thus offer a longer story.
Graduate of ENSBA Lyon in 2014, Cécile Bouffard is a sculptor who gives life to a repertoire of objects borrowed from everyday life and sensual gestures. Tilting between the familiar and the strange, her creations cultivate a constant ambiguity in terms of categories, uses and definitions of form and usage. . She co-edits the magazine VNOUJE, a lesbian epic with Fusion (a collective composed of Cécile Bouffard, Roxanne Maillet and Clara Pacotte) launched at Lafayette Anticipation and the CAC Brétigny.
British-American dancer and performer Ruth Childs was born in 1984 in London. She grew up in the United States where she studied dance (classical and contemporary) and music (violin.) In 2003 she moved to Geneva to finish her dance training with the Junior Ballet of Geneva. 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. She premiered fantasia, her first solo at the ADC, Geneva in October 2019. Ruth is currently one of the associated artists of the Arsenic in Lausanne.
1-5: Cécile Bouffard & Ruth Childs, “Delicate People”, performance at La Becque, 2021, photo Manon Briod
6-10: Cécile Bouffard & Ruth Childs, “Delicate People”, rehearsals at Arsenic, 2021, photo Manon Briod