“My practices as an artist can be described as an evolution of visual story telling in which my emotional curiosities becomes animated on a time-based landscape.”
Geneva Foster Gluck is a recipient of a 2015 Artist Research & Development Grant.
Artist Research and Development Grants are designed to support the advancement of artistic research, aid in the development of artistic work and recognize the contributions individual artists make to Arizona’s communities. For more information about the Artist Research & Development Grant, click here.
Geometry of the West aims to be a visually captivating and technically savvy performance that merges dance theatre and contemporary circus to explore the clichés of Old Westerns in search of a narrative which reflects a truer and more complex relationship between the land, people and access to natural resources. Part story corps and part collective scriptwriting, this project developed from the gathered predictions of the ‘future West’ written by the culturally diverse inhabitants of the area to create a contemporary “Western Show”.
This project follows Foster Gluck’s return home from a decade of professional work in European contemporary circus-theatre. Having grown up in the Sonoran Desert, she connects personally to this work that allows her to engage in discourse with her community about social, environmental and fringe-culture narratives of the West. The acute relationships to water and environment for survival, the relationship between peoples and histories, and the politics of coexistence opens the dialogue to global issues while also being about home. A main set piece of the show is a box which houses the audio archive of recorded narratives, the stories that are the foundation for Geometry of the West. It is Foster Gluck’s intention that with successful programming and touring, the show will not only engage with audiences of Southern Arizona, but that it will reach national and international audiences.
Geneva Foster Gluck began her training in fine art, dance, and athletic-circus performance. In 1999 while completing her BFA at University of Arizona, Gluck became a core member of Tucson-based Flam Chen Pyrotechnic Theatre where she was responsible for introducing aerial circus skills and interactive sculpture into the company’s performance repertoire. Flam Chen performed at NYC and Philadelphia Fringe Festivals in 2001 and 2002.
After Gluck earned her M.A. in Scenography at the University of London in 2003, she went on to work with some of the UK’s most successful contemporary and immersive theatre companies, including: Fevered Sleep (2003), Marisa Carnesky (2004), and SHUNT (2005), before establishing her own company, Sugar Beast Circus, in 2007. Sugar Beast Circus received many professional recognitions, including Jean Circ Talant shortlisting (2008), a residency at The Roadhouse (2010), a Circus Futures award (2011), and a premiere at the prestigious London International Mime Festival (2012). Gluck currently teaches Theatre Design classes at Pima Community College, and is researching the American Southwest and historical Western acts of traveling circus shows while developing her most recent performance and installation, Geometry of the West.
Perspectives: Geneva Foster Gluck
"Often, people cringe or become uncomfortable with blatant statements, but I find that if I take a different, more abstract tack, a broader audience will absorb the performance, and it'll be in their psyches at a certain layer. They get it without me having to be heavy-handed about it."
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