KEY POINTS:
"Don't worry, parents, they're not having a fit," said MC Lua Maynard at a rally against domestic violence in Manukau yesterday.
He was introducing South Auckland's answer to youth gangs - a new dance craze called "krumping" in which groups of dancers take turns to have what look
like convulsions, often ending in a dramatic fall to the ground.
Kingdom Warfare, a group of about 25 teenagers from a mixture of schools, showed how krumping "channels the anger" away from violence.
"We just started with three guys and then we started recruiting our families and friends," said one of the founders, Tommy Misa, 16, from Onehunga.
The dance form stands for Kingdom Radically Uprising Mighty Praise and originated in Los Angeles as a Christian spinoff from hip-hop.
Kingdom Warfare members come from several different churches.
About 200 people attended the rally in Manukau Square after marching around the Manukau shopping centre chanting slogans against violence. Counties-Manukau has the country's highest rate of reported domestic violence and has seen a series of murders this year.
Sita Selupe, a cousin of 17-year-old Riki Mafi who was killed with a baseball bat while walking through the Otara town centre in September, said God could turn the evil of her cousin's death into a transformation of the community for the good.
"The streets of South Auckland have been likened to those of downtown Los Angeles in terms of the level of gang violence," she said.
A former teacher, Ms Selupe said teachers in South Auckland had an average of only 2 minutes of one-on-one time with each student each week - "not enough time for teachers to be catalysts for change".
But she has started an alternative "Rise Up Learning Community" at her home in Weymouth, where parents and other family members learn how to give their children individual attention after school. She is seeking funding to extend the idea to the rest of Manukau.
Two final-year students at Manurewa's James Cook High School, Troy Tu'ua and Jerry Seve, said they left the Bloods gang last year to pursue interests in drama and rap music.
Troy has just been accepted for Toi Whakaari drama school in Wellington and Jerry plans to become a professional rap artist.
They joined the Bloods at age 15 and 12 respectively just to "hang out".
"It's a community gang," Troy said. "We changed by stepping out of it. A few of us pulled out. I thought, 'Am I going to live the rest of my life there?"'
The boys star in a movie directed by their drama teacher Olivia Muliaumaseali'i, From Boys 2 Men, which is due for release in Manukau next year.
