Rize

Saw the new Dave LaChapelle film Rize yesterday. The flick explores a new dance movement that has emerged with black youth in Los Angeles. Framed as both a reaction to the L.A. Riots and an alternative to gang life, the movie traces the origins of the movement to a surreal figure named Tommy the Clown.

Tommy is an ex-drug dealer turned community icon who hosts hip-hop themed birthday parties and organizes dance battles. His bombastic style of dance has influenced a whole generation, who paint their faces, dance like crazy, battle each other, and speak of clowning (and its offshoot krump movement) with a spirited intensity.

What is most remarkable is the individual lives that are profiled in the film. Kids between 12-20 speak about the agony of losing parents to drugs, the ever-present threat of violence, the impact of gangs, as well as the strength of the church and the solace that dance provides them with. Krumping is way to work out issues in your personal life, one Krumper explains; it is a way of channeling anger and releasing it in a positive way. It's about expressing the "hurt, sorrow, and anguish that people don't know about." Another guy, Tight Eyez, says "we are not going to be clones of the commercial hip-hop world." He continues, "people are waiting on something different. We are a new generation with morals. We are more valuable than a chain or a car."

Was more than a little surprised to read Ed Halter's review in the Village Voice. "Few of the interviews get much further than recording surface boasts and assertive self-definitions," he writes. "LaChapelle connects all their stories with common threads of resisting gang culture, but at the expense of flattening out each person's character."

Is he crazy? During the course of the film, we see one teen Krumper follow his father into a gang, and speak about it with a gut-wrenching sense of resignation. We see Tommy weeping after his home is broken into and trashed; we see a community in mourning after one young dancer is killed in a drive-by shooting; we see a dancer grieving his father's suicide through dance. How is this "surface boasts" and "assertive self-definitions"? Please. These are powerful moments of humanity. Is Halter so cynical that he is beyond being moved by them?