RIZE - the fast and the furious

Tommy the Clown, LA South Central ghetto celebrity, started out with his routine following the Rodney King riots in 1992. A regular fixture at kids’ birthday parties, his own brand of hip hop clowning would vibe off the various dance styles emerging across the neighborhoods. These dance moves were, in turn, riding waves of anger, pain and frustration in dire need of an outlet, in areas where the only channels seemed to be some combination of gang-banging, drugs and crime. Against this backdrop, the resulting dance cultures of Clowning and Krumping play the leading roles in celeb-photographer David LaChapelle’s first feature length documentary, Rize.

At the start of the film, LaChapelle needs to state that none of the filmed sequences have been sped up. This seems more a ploy to highlight the feisty, gutteral aggressiveness of the dancing than to pre-empt any pangs of disbelief that this is real. The dancing “like I wanna hurt you” stands up in its own right, hypnotic in its almost shamanistic excess, a hip hop moshpit at times as balletic as La La La Human Steps , while being as expressive a dance form you’ll witness to modern music anywhere. “You never seen pain expressed this way”, one of the Krump tracks tells us over a dance session.

Throughout history, clowns have held a powerful position throughout societies worldwide. Fools, but rarely fools, their performance mask has always allowed them the freedom to express those things others would have received the short, sharp, shock for. Turning the world upside down, they’ve lived outside the norm of accepted and acceptable truth, offering subversive alternatives in non-threatening ways.

Nobody gave me a dime. And I proceeded to become the richest man on Earth. And I ain’t got a dime.

Though clowns have a reputation for being scary, former convicted drug-dealer Tommy the clown is one of the most likeable characters you’ll see in cinema this year. Kitted out in rainbow wig and white face, red balloons grace his cheeks like inverted tears, an expression almost of what his art and his living is all about: turning those frowns upside down. An estimated 50 clown groups have followed in his oversized footsteps, many from the stables of his own academy. To most, he’s the grandaddy of the clown dance scene, and a saviour to many. In the lower parts of Los Angeles there are few choices.

They’re gonna ask you who you dance with or what set you’re from?

Clowning offers an alternative set of gangs, Crips and Bloods paralleled by the different dance groups, where what moves you pull off offer alternatives to what piece you pack.

I honestly think I’d have been a very very very bad person.

Breaking away from the clown movement are those who Krump. Krumping is similar in style, but unlike its predecessor, doesn’t let itself be limited to “bringing smiles where there were no smiles”. The near trance-like states the dancers aspire to are, in one sequence, counterpointed with footage of ceremonial dances of African tribesmen. The similarities are striking, right down to the face-painting.

See this ain’t a circus,
We ain’t clowns,
Don’t let the face paint fool you.

The Krumpers take themselves a bit more seriously than Tommy’s followers, and the agressiveness in the dancing can spill over into posturing in the language. Trying to explain the cultural importance of what is really a profoundly visceral experience leads to some pretty annoying interviews in the film. Too many of them too. In adapting two shorter documentaries into one cinema release, LaChapelle has had to resort to a certain amount of padding. A narrative structure also starts being employed to this end, leading us up to a ‘Jets versus Sharks’-like dance-off towards the end. After getting so upclose and personal in the first hour, squeezing the energies of the two dance forms into Hollywood musical conventions rings a touch hollow.

Where the film works best is as an anthropological study documenting inner city youth culture. Where it strains is where that world is framed by a queasy Christina Aguilera adding her inspirational sludge to the palette. Interestingly, except for one sequence towrds the end, the hyper-reality that so characterizes LaChapelle’s still photography, has been almost entirely replaced by hand held rough-and-cut video footage, where the auteur takes a backseat. This is where the film succeeds. And when it does, you can’t look away.

Rize is showing at Salon Cinema until Friday, March 10. Click here for showtimes.