Beltane Solstice Moon
Butch Thompson is an elegant guy who can really get down. “Two Minnesota artists — celebrated choreographer Sarah LaRose-Holland and jazz pianist Butch Thompson — have collaborated to present “Destination Twin Cities,” an impressionistic, time-traveling exploration of neighborhoods, landmarks, people and places that define urban life in Minnesota. Who were we, and who are we today?”
Butch played piano and one very soulful clarinet piece and Sarah LaRose-Holland’s dance troupe, Kinetic Evolutions, gave movement to a nostalgic look back at many Twin Cities’ notable places from the Lexington Restaurant to the Hennepin Avenue Strip. The latter roughly located where Block E is now. It was a place full of dives that provided steady work for many Minnesota jazz musicians.
Slides of Twin Cities past: the Wabasha Caves, street cars, winter scenes in neighborhoods, the Stone Arch Bridge, the West Bank accompanied the music and dance projected on the brick wall of the former Guthrie Lab space, 700 N. 1st Street.
Butch’s music was sad, cheery, bouncy, wistful and cool. The choreography had some fine moments, especially two two person sets, one ironic and intentionally so I imagine, paired a fine African-American dancer, Kasono Mawanza, with a superb Chinese dancer, Jenny Sung, moving through an evening at the haunt of the white power elite, the Lexington while the second featured a mother and daughter walking on Selby Avenue. The daughter was 5 years old, maybe 6 and kept right up with the adult who could have been her real mother. The Lexington piece was elegant and smooth, all careful sinuousity while the Selby Avenue work had improvisation and the kind of charm only a young performer can bring to the stage.