Rize

Goodness, I love movies. Maybe not as much as Andy Ladow, and maybe not enough to know every single actor and every single film, but I like them enough to say movies play a vital role in shaping my understanding of self and others.

Movies are both a window into the soul and a projector onto the world. Not all movies, of course. There are enough Gigli’s and Returns of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (don’t ask Matthew McConaughey or Renee Zellwegger about that early career nightmare) to prove that it doesn’t take much more than a manageable budget, a flimsy plot and a few recognizable names to turn some rolls of film into a movie.

But forget the crap. I love movies, and when I say that, I mean I love artistic, well thought-out, beautifully shot, sharp, witty, engaging, this-has-something-to-say-to-you movies. Be it a documentary, a drama, a comedy or a thriller, anything will do – so long as the picture before my eyes is alive with suspense or mystery or imagination or irony. Let me see art in and through the media of film.

Let me see movies like Rize more often.

In Rize, a documentary that came out in 2005, there is a scene of such carnal beauty and transcendent emotion that you will find yourself reduced to joy and pain. The joy comes in witnessing the God-given grace of dance – specifically dance embraced and enacted by every muscle of the human body. The pain also arises out of the human form and it is just as profound; it is the pain of knowing that even at our height – our glory – we are dancing before a descending sun, destined for nothing more than ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Watch the movie; you’ll know what I’m talking about. Listen for Christina Aguilera’s “Soar.” You’ll find your spirits lifted and waiting for the chorus of the song to kick in.

In general, the movie is about a new type of dance called clowning or krumping, which is emerging in south central Los Angeles. The movie begins innocently enough with the introduction of Tommy the Clown, one of the originators of this new movement, showing up at a neighborhood birthday party in his tricked-out clown car (not Barnum’s variety) and breaking it down in the middle of the street. Tommy explains that clowning began rather haphazardly when someone needed an entertainer for a party, and, wham, Tommy the Clown was born. As word spread of Tommy’s warmth with kids and inspiring message (Tommy was able to turn his back to violence and drugs looming on every corner), clowning became an anti-gang activity, a way to move against the troubling forces that have brought so many others under.

But just as Tommy sought a way to express creatively a different energy besides the hate and pride of gangs, others soon let the new dance wrap itself around all that the streets breath and soak. Clowning became krumping – a much harsher, intense, furious dance. Picture Westside Story meets Boyz ‘n the Hood. Someone in the documentary calls the new dance “ghetto ballet,” and it is a perfect description – all the anger, all the pressure and strife, injustice and desire clashing … using arms and torsos, legs and eyes to convey meaning through movement. There is a scene early in the film of a group of young African-American women re-enacting a police beating, doing so rhythmically and redefining my understanding of interpretive dance. In other scenes, the dancers make you squirm with the raw, brutally frank expression of sexual potency – again smacking you with a reality that cannot be ignored or escaped on these streets.

The whole time I was watching this film I longed to krump. Every sane part in me shouted that there was no way in Hades I could (there are some things my white-guy knees and back will never master, and this is at the top of the impossible list), but even that did not stop my spirit moving within. I wanted to taste the deep burn of expending every bit of oxygen in my lungs and tissue. I wanted to sense the community and drama in releasing a new move, displaying a new message. I wanted to triumph in a clash not of fist but of balance and theatrics.

And, again and again, I found myself absorbed by the deep irony and tragedy of the dance – the fever-pitch action and force, which ultimately expends itself as a silent scream in a world full of gun shots and police sirens. In the end, several krumpers are shown in one symbolic and artistic scene: in a concrete ravine (part of the urban-artery known as the Los Angeles River), they dance and glisten in their sweat, thrusting their arms in unleashed passion, their abs sculpted into the commands of their bodies. They are tireless in their effort, occasionally slowed for drama by the camera. The presiding effect: the dance is their life; their soul released before it can be swallowed by drugs or senseless violence. It is a desperate dance, an angry gesture, and, still, it is full of sensuality. It says as the sun descends: I have not yet died. Turn up the music; the dance must grow stronger.

Wes