Last week Jessica Fogel took the cast of Into the Wind to see the site for our August performances in Muskegon.  This was a really engaging and productive visit for all of us--essential for our creative process and eventual performance.  Between the Michigan Alternative & Renewable Energy Center (MAREC) and an old, soon-to-be-closed coal power plant is where our dance will happen.  To see the site helped me to more fully understand the land and community, and it also helped me to begin the process of piecing together the ideas we have been exploring in rehearsal.  This land has a history.  There have been many changes--some wanted and some unexpected.  If this land evolves and transitions from one industry (coal) to another (wind/renewable energy), the community of Muskegon will experience another change. Hopefully for the better.  

Through the rehearsal process, I have learned so much about the richness and importance of this one strip of land, and I am curious to find out what the audience members will take away from the dance.  What will they learn?  What will they discover?  And what will we (the dancers/artists/collaborators) learn from them?

Patty Solorzano 

Over the last two years at the University of Michigan as an MFA candidate, I have had many opportunities to interact with Jessica Fogel in the classroom as well as in my own dance making process as she so generously took on the role of my thesis committee chair. Fogel’s tenacity in seeking out relevant information and talented collaborators in order to make educated decisions about how and what to include in the creative process is just one of the many reasons I am thrilled to have the opportunity to dance for her in the Into the Wind project. The hours of research, study and conversation make a fruitful base from which to grow many different ideas. Currently, in the rehearsal process, we have been working with three main topics. First, using our bodies to think through the ways wind moves across the earth and its force on objects in space. Second, we are thinking and dancing out ideas surrounding multiple perspectives about the positive and negative effects (on people and place) of erecting the gigantic wind turbine structures. Finally, we are imagining and re-imagining what the landscape of the performance site has been and what it could be. These are really big ideas to embody. Finding ways to transition between them and create a cohesive dance work is an engaging and challenging experience.

Amy Guilmette

This is my second season with Ann Arbor Dance Works, but the first as a University of Michigan graduate student, and so far it has been a really exiting and enriching process to have been involved with this project early on.  Last fall, Jessica brought me in to help her with this project because of my interest in promoting environmental stewardship through dance.  Now that rehearsals are in full swing, it has been a pleasure to work in the studio and see how all the ideas that Jessica has shared with me throughout the year come to life.  In addition, it has been great to meet all the collaborators in this project. Their expertise, whether scientific or artistic, will no doubt guide and inform the work we do in the dance studio.

On Friday, May 9th collaborator Sara Mills, Doctoral Student, University of Michigan Urban and Regional Planning, paid us a visit during rehearsals to share some of the research she has been doing throughout Michigan’s communities in relation to wind energy. 

Something that really struck me was the fact that while most people are in favor of wind energy, the truth is that a large percentage of people (80%) live in cities where a wind turbine is unlikely to affect their landscape.  It is the rural communities that will have to deal with having turbines in their properties.  Therefore, it is incredibly important to find out how and why would these communities want or not want to have wind energy developers put up those massive turbines on their land.  An understanding of the community and the relationships between neighbors is key because a landscape belongs to the community.

Meanwhile in rehearsals, it’s been interesting to explore various ideas involving wind within the body.  What is wind?  How is wind created?  How can we create wind (breath) with our bodies?  How can we figuratively become wind and thereby understand it?  Perhaps by understanding the relationship between humans and our ability to harness our breath as a source of movement we can understand the relationship between communities and the ability to harness wind as a source of energy. 

Patty Solórzano

Note:  For Sara Mills’ bio, please click on the ‘collaborators’ tab under ‘2014 Season: Into the Wind.’

As this is my first season with Ann Arbor Dance Works, I really didn’t know what to expect coming in. I also joined the dance program a semester late, so I didn’t even get to take Composition 1 with Jessica. I really love the calligraphic choreography. It naturally lends to sweeping motions as you picture the huge letters you’re writing in the air, and it makes the choreography very easy to remember – if you know the words you’re writing, you know the choreography! I’ve also been excited to learn more about the controversy surrounding wind energy. Jessica has asked us to read and watch several articles and videos on the topic, and I feel it’s really enriched the rehearsal process. One of my favorite articles that we read is from the New Yorks Times. What I took away most from the article is that while many object to the very development of wind farms because of their threat to birds and bats, the threat can be diminished very simply by raising the speed of wind turbines so that flying animals will be less likely to fly near the turbines (in order to avoid the wind speed). I also especially liked the article in Detroit News that Jessica asked us to read. I wasn’t previously aware that wind turbines caused sound pollution. It also reminded me that the real-world outcomes of these large-scale, moral, and philosophical questions about energy and the environment always come down to policy-making, and more often than not, local policy-making. I’d like to end this post by outlining the individual goals in this project that I’ve set for myself. First, I’d like to work on my partnering – I feel I need to be better at relating physically with those I’m dancing with. Second, I’d like to discover how it feels to embody the imagery and non-physical concepts we’ve been talking in a tangible, real way. I want to really feel the wind inside me as opposed to imagining it there. I’m really excited about how much I’ll learn from Jessica and the other dancers in the project this year!


Alayna Baron

Last month, Jessica Fogel hosted a collaborators meeting at her lovely home.  Much was shared there including plans for the structure of the site-specific dance that will take place in Muskegon in August.  In the words of Jessica Fogel:  “Central sections of the dance will embody abstract ideas about the invisible forces of wind--how they act upon us and shape us, and alternatively, how we can act upon/with wind to harness its power. The idea of invisible forces as metaphor runs through the performance as well:  tugs of war in the community about the development of the site, traces of past inhabitants,  political and economic forces acting upon factions in the wind energy debates.”  From here many more questions and ideas were discussed, and we learned about the various contributions of the collaborators—music, poetry, art, science and community. 

At the meeting, the collaborators were treated to a special preview of a brief solo Fogel choreographed for Robin Wilson that will be a part of the performance.  The solo is inspired by a painting by Huey Lee-Smith entitled Après Midi, owned by the Muskegon Museum of Art. Fogel explained that the painting, depicting a female figure in a windy, industrial beach setting, is reminiscent of the performance site along Muskegon Lake.

Now after much musing, thinking and planning, Jessica Fogel and dancers have dived right into rehearsals as of last Tuesday!  More updates and posts will come soon from all the dancers.  Stay tuned!

Patty Solórzano