Here’s a curious thing on many levels. It’s a documentary about a new form of dance, shot mostly in South Central Los Angeles (you may have heard it referred to by Ice T as “the hood”) featuring black youths who paint their faces like clowns. There’s nary a gun to be seen, and despite the setting almost everything about the film is hugely uplifting and positive. It’s the only film I’ve ever seen to commence with the disclaimer “no footage seen in this movie has been sped up in any way”. Most surprising of all, this is a film by photographer and music video director David LaChapelle, the man behind the H&M advert even worse than Baz Luhrmann’s godawful Chanel No. 5 “movie”, and it’s really bloody good.
LaChapelle (not to be confused with comedian Dave Chapelle of his Block Party fame) discovered Krumping while shooting the video for Christina Aguilera’s Dirrty (what do you mean you only remember her bottom?) and has uncovered the dance’s roots through interviews with the foremost figures of the scene, such as progenitor Tommy the Clown. For the unitiated (that’ll be most of us), Clowning is an astonishingly high-energy form of dance involving much flailing of the arms and torso, usually danced to hip-hop; although the Clowns are keen to stress that this is something new, separate from the commercial hip-hop popularised in mainstream movies, boogaloo and robotics are prominent in both. It’s the antithesis of Riverdance (thank god); whilst that involves no motion at all from the waist up, most of the work done in this film emphasises motion of the upper body. And what motion. You’ll get tired just watching them.
Krumping is a more aggressive, angry-looking form of Clowning, but typical of the film’s positive vibe, the Krumpers inform us that fighting is the last thing on their mind when they’re using the dance to channel their anger. The key thing is that these youngsters have chosen, by their own admission, to join one of over 50 Clown Crews rather than devote their life to drugs, drive-bys and death. As prominent Krumper Dragon notes as the film begins, “if you’re drowning and you see a board, you’re gonna grab that board to save your life…we took that board and we made a ship”.
You have to admire LaChapelle’s keen intent to display the positivity that dancing has lent his protagonists, even if his contrasting of the suburb he visited in 2002 with the riot-wrecked LA of 1965 and 1992 seems heavy-handed. To an extent his inexperience as a full-length filmmaker shines through, showing the deference to Dirty Dancing required by dance films by saving a big dance-off for the end of the film, despite the lack of build-up towards it, this being a documentary and not a dramatisation. But I’m really being picky now. Rize is a top-class film and should be seen by anyone who wants to be uplifted and impressed. And then we should start a petition to the BBC for Strictly Come Clowning. C-list celebrities flailing their arms like they’re having a embolism? Worth the licence fee alone.