Lucinda Childs

Lucinda Childs began her career at the Judson Dance Theater in New York in 1963. Since forming her dance company ten years later, she has created over fifty works, both solo and ensemble. In 1976 she was featured in the landmark avant-garde opera “Einstein on the Beach” by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, for which she won an Obie Award.

In 1979 Childs choreographed one of her most enduring works, “Dance”, with music by Philip Glass and film décor by Sol LeWitt, which toured internationally and has been added to the repertory of the Lyon Opera Ballet, for which she has choreographed Beethoven’s “Grande Fugue”.

Since 1981 Childs has choreographed over thirty works for major ballet companies, including the Paris Opera Ballet, Ballet du Rhin et Les Ballets de Monte Carlo and Introdans. She has also directed and choreographed a number of contemporary and eighteenth-century operas, including Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice” for the Los Angeles Opera, Mozart’s “Zaide” for La Monnaie in Brussels, Stravinsky’s “Le Rossignol” and “Oedipus Rex”, Vivaldi’s “Farnace”, and John Adams’s “Doctor Atomic” for the Opera du Rhin.

Childs is the recipient of numerous awards. She holds the rank of Commandeur in France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 2017 she received the Golden Lion award from the Venice Biennale and the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival award for lifetime achievement. In 2018 she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, New York and in 2022, she was awarded the Dance Magazine Award.