Rize

Don't confuse gettin crunk with gettin krump. The former owing its origins to southern slang is about livening the mood and making things exciting. The latter refers to a dance form that along with clowning is the subject of David LaChapelle's documentary "Rize." As the story goes, LaChapelle was shooting Christina Aguilera's "Dirty" music video when he was introduced to dancers who were doing something wholly unique and ultimately more interesting than his current project. He wrapped the shoot with overflowing excitement because he could now investigate what he had only caught a glimpse of, the new and original dance style known as krumping.

"Rize" is a terrific documentary because in it, unlike the style made multi-million-dollar-successful by Michael Moore, LaChapelle does not editorialize. This film is about capturing this social movement - expressed through dance - that has taken hold in the violence-ravaged hoods of Los Angeles from South Central to Watts. The movie opens against a backdrop of urban upheaval and feelings of powerlessness and disgruntledness as manifested through the Watts riots and the Rodney King Riots some thirty years later. However, as we hear the stories of the dancers as they explain how and why they got involved with clowning or krumping, what becomes apparent is that the real backdrop that this art form is set against is the gang violence in their midst every day, their very own Baghdad. The pink elephant in the film is that these kids are born into an existence where their life chances are low, one to two mistakes or bad breaks away from death, but no hope of success - not what we associate with America and its dream.

It is in this suffocating void that krumping and clowning evolved. In the place of drug gangs, the kids have formed dance gangs if you will. The dance movements rely heavily on popping, commonly associated with strippers, and in various expressions pull from other recent popular black dance forms such as Crip walking and the Harlem shake. The flailing of the dancers as they twerk their bodies violently and at extreme angles is a cathartic release of extreme emotion. Feelings of distress, anger, longing, hate, love, violence are all channeled through the movements of the bodies and communicate as effectively as ballet. And what is so beautiful about this therapy is that for all of its showiness and threat of violence against the opposing dancer, in the end, it is about dance and when a battle is finished it is finished.

"Rize" at its core shows that artistic creativity is bubbling below the surface in various marginalized communities in the face of the years of reducing funding for the arts. "Rize" shows how faith and youth culture have melded to give young people a sense of hope, purpose and direction. "Rize" shows that even under unrelenting duress, like air, still the people rize.