Bemidji Earth Day event blends poetry, dance, songs on courthouse lawn

The Beltrami County Courthouse lawn turned into a public Earth Day stage Wednesday evening as Belle Thalia Creative Arts Space brought poetry, songs, dance and readings to 619 Beltrami Ave. NW in Bemidji. The 5 p.m. program put the newly formed Bemidji Justice Singers alongside local poets and authors, giving downtown one of its most visible civic spaces a distinctly local environmental focus.

The event, titled Celebration of Our Earth, was not framed as a standard concert. It mixed modern dance with spoken word and music, and later accounts said one of the dance pieces was set to Michael Jackson’s Earth Song. That blend mattered in a city where lakes, forests and trails are part of daily identity, because the message reached beyond performance and into the way residents think about place, public land and the water that shapes the region.

Organizers also tied the evening to a specific conservation cause. A free-will donation was requested for Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, an organization that says it has spent nearly 50 years advocating for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and was instrumental in passage of the 1978 Boundary Waters Protection Act. That link gave the gathering a concrete regional stake, connecting courthouse lawn performance to one of northern Minnesota’s longest-running environmental fights.

Belle Thalia, founded in 2012, describes itself as an artist-centered rural arts space built to create “wide-open spaces” for creativity and community in northern Minnesota. Its model fits the setting: a 190-seat performance space, outdoor performance areas and a public event staged outside on the courthouse grounds rather than behind a ticketed venue wall. Attendees were asked to bring a lawn chair, reinforcing the feel of an accessible community gathering rather than a formal show.

The evening was also part of a broader civic and cultural program in Bemidji, with additional Earth Day activity later at the Northwest Indian Community Development Center. Cate Belleveau of Mask and Rose Women’s Theater was listed as part of the program, adding a historical element with a brief Earth Day history alongside the performances. The result was a courthouse-square celebration that used art to make environmental concern visible, local and immediate.