Earth Day at 50 Teach-Out

Jessica Fogel, a Professor Emerita of Dance at University of Michigan and Choreographer, shares her piece Into the Wind, a project she created about the potential for offshore wind turbines off the coast of Michigan. This multidisciplinary performance explored the tensions between community goals, economic opportunity, and sustainability.

Read a personal reflection about her performance Into the Wind by Jessica Fogel:

“Directly following our performances, we had talkbacks with the audience members. It’s difficult to ​quantify how the performance changed the relationship with local communities. It was certainly another way of bringing the conversation about renewable energy/offshore wind forward, and a very direct way for the audience members to begin to imagine a movement towards renewable energy, with their feet right there on the ground where the potential exists.The audience members who attended​ reported that they​ were moved by the poignancy of traveling through the site of the former factory, and imagining what the future might hold for the community. One of our collaborators, biologist Erik Nordman, had conducted many surveys with West Michigan citizens about their feelings about offshore wind. In reflecting on our performances and talk backs, he said “It really opened my eyes to a different way of communication with the public about science.” Since our performance in 2014, the site of our performance has continued to undergo transitions in energy planning and use. MAREC has been renamed the Muskegon Innovation Hub, supporting businesses and entrepreneurs. In 2016 the BC Cobb Coal factory across the bay was closed as Consumers Energy moved towards cleaner energy, and the tower of the factory was continuing demolition in January 2020. Plans are for the site to be transformed into a deep water port terminal to specialize in cross-lake Michigan shipping. There are plans afoot for turning a nearby site into an industrial park for food processing, capitalizing on cross-lake shipping. Or perhaps it’s a site that further in the future could manufacture the enormous wind turbine blades that are so difficult to transport across land, and transport them across water, who knows. This is ​an idea Arn Boezaart, the director of MAREC, had ​discussed when I was working with him on the project. The potential for offshore wind in the Great Lakes continues to be explored. The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation continues to work through state and federal permissions and technical challenges for installing offshore wind turbines in Lake Erie a few miles from Cleveland. ​Offshore wind in the Great Lakes is still a long haul​ away​. Depending upon who is elected​ ​president in 2020, there may be a lot of support for research and development around renewable energy, and maybe some of the momentum that began 10-15 years ago around research and support for offshore wind in the Great Lakes will resurface and be successful. It’s essential to keep the conversations about offshore wind ​and other forms of renewable energy ​going. Grassroots approaches and ​local ​conversations are important as one advocates for renewable energy–it’s important to “think global/act local.” One of our community partners in the project was a group called West Michigan Jobs Group—they lived in the Muskegon area and were advocating for renewable energy businesses, including offshore wind, as a way to heal the planet and boost their damaged economy. There are a lot of legitimate concerns about where and how to locate both onshore and offshore wind turbines, but solutions can be found if the approaches to the community are thoughtful, and if the support for breakthrough research is there.”