Louisville's Old Walnut Street is now Muhammad Ali Blvd. (Caufield amp; Shook Collection Photographic Archives / University of Louisville)John Keen grew up in Louisville, but he said he didn’t know at the time how much history is embedded in the streets of Muhammad Ali Boulevard.What many Louisvi lle residents know today as the street named after the boxing legend used to be a thriving Black business district called Old Walnut Street. And internationally-known jazz players performed at a popular jazz club on that strip for years.Keen said he learned more about Old Walnut Street a few years ago after watching a documentary.“It was filled with people making money and just enjoying life,” he said. “It was the barber shops, the dry cleaners…There were Black people just being their best selves.”On Saturday, Keen will combine his love for Louisville’s Black history and modern dance into Keen Dance Theatre’s production of “The Top Hat.” The dance production pays tribute to the city’s once-vibrant jazz scene that was lost to time and urban renewal.In the late 1800s, Black Louisvillians opened businesses on Walnut Street from 6th to 13th Streets. And by the 1920s, there were more than 150 Black-owned businesses in the area, including banks, barbershops, restaurants, churches, doctors’ offices and more in the racially segregated city.The Top Hat tavern opened in 1938 and hosted music legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday.In Keen’s production of “The Top Hat,” actors will portray Fitzgerald, Ellington and Holiday as well as Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington and Peggy Lee. Each character’s dialogue draws attention to moments in U.S. history from that period, Keen said.For example, an actor will perform a portion of Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” written about the lynching of Black men in the South.“[It was] still in an era where there's lynching going on,” Keen said. “You have Billie Holiday, who runs into this club because somewhere out outside the club she's seen someone being lynched, so she runs in with this noose and she's showing what what she's seen.”By the 1960s, a developer from Missouri proposed a plan to demolish Old Walnut Street to make room for urban renewal plans under a federal program. Developers destroyed more than 900 buildings in the area, forcing Black families to retreat deeper into west Louisville, according to the University of Louisville’s Envirome Institute. The once-vibrant business district and surrounding blocks are now parking lots, a River City bank, the Romano Mazzoli Federal Building and Martin Luther King Jr. Park in downtown Louisville. Urban renewal planners at the time wanted the area to become a civic center, a museum and a mall, but the plans never came to fruition.“Being from Louisville, you don't hear a lot about Black culture that happened in the West End,” Keen said.Keen said when he started his dance theater in 2009, he wanted every production to tell a story through movement. He said this production is a piece he is the most proud of. Keen started his dance group in New York then moved back to hometown in Louisville. (Giselle Rhoden / LPM )“So this wasn't just about dance, it's also an educational moment about things that happened in that era,” Keen said. “The story is: you are dealing with five artists that are going through something in their life.”“The Top Hat” will be performed Saturday at 6:30 p.m. at Actors Theatre. The show runs about an hour and 15 minutes. ...read more read less