Krumping is the new high-energy kraze

In the opening sequence of Rize, a disclaimer warns that no footage has been sped up. People laughed when it screened at the International Film Festival in Auckland earlier this year - but it wasn't a joke.

Soon after came incredible images of bodies writhing and twitching, shuddering with such speed and spastic energy they seemed powered by a very high voltage battery.

Rize director David LaChappelle was shooting a music video for Christina Aguilera three years ago when he noticed dancers pulling these wild moves backstage. Fascinated, he took up an invitation to witness a krumping competition in Compton.

"I fell in love with it at first sight," he says. "I thought it was something that needed to be seen. I didn't know that people could move their bodies like that. I felt the same way as when I first saw breakdancing."

Abandoning the high-gloss fashion and music photography work on which he'd built his reputation, LaChappelle started commuting to the seamier side of Los Angeles, a world immortalised by West Coast hip-hop artists and identified for its guns, thuggery and crime. In Rize he traces a story that is almost as unbelievable as the dance itself.

The film's central figure is Tommy "The Clown" Johnson, who in the wake of the LA riots performed as a clown at children's parties.

He founded a hip-hop clown academy that offered an alternative to the Crips or Bloods. He noticed several of the younger recruits incorporating unique dance moves in the routines, and these soon caught on around the neighbourhood. Although many of these kids came from tragic domestic backgrounds, they would congregate not to misbehave but to dance. Krumping was a emotional release.

LaChappelle is accustomed to people asking him how a white man with a flashy Hollywood background could waltz into this community and start filming. He insists anyone could have done it - he just happened to be the first.

"Never at any time did I feel unsafe about being there. That's the point - there are big misconceptions about the area. Not to say it isn't deadly. People were shot and killed when we were filming. But I never felt unsafe.

"I think it was obvious to them that I was sincere, that I was excited about what they were doing. I was not there to exploit something - I was there to document it."

One dancer in the film insists that krumping is not a trend but a part of life that won't be commercialised by mainstream hip-hop culture - a proud although naive view because that's exactly what is happening. Simply switch on a hip-hop music video - anything by Missy Elliot, for example - to see how readily krumping has been assimilated.

At the Auckland festival, cinemagoers filed out into the carpark at the end of the film and started jiggling like crazy.

LaChappelle argues that it's not the dance in Rize that's important but the story behind it, a story that frees the dancers from the "thugs, pimps and hustlers" image.

"Everyone's jumped on krumping as this new look of dance of hip-hop - that's inevitable," LaChappelle says. "But the dancers looked at me like I was a window to the world. My camera was their way to access people who wouldn't normally get to see them dance. These young people want their work to be seen."

If you look at LaChappelle's body of work it's natural to feel dubious. His photography has graced the covers of Italian Vogue, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. He's directed advertising campaigns for L'Oreal, Diesel Jeans and Ford and captured flawless images of Madonna, Uma Thurman, Drew Barrymore and Leonardo DiCaprio. Why should we trust him as a film-maker when his images are so perfect and surreal?

"I pretty much let the subjects do the talking and the speaking and time in front of the camera," LaChappelle says. "So it's not really about me, it's about the subjects."

Aside from one sequence near the end of the film, there are no special effects, nor does the director appear in the film in the manner of Michael Moore. But there's a great scene where LaChappelle juxtaposes krumpers with old footage of their tribal African ancestors to show the uncanny resemblance. LaChappelle was worried it would seem heavy-handed - until he invited those in the film and people from the neighbourhood to see it for the first time.

"There was screaming in the theatre, people punching their fists in the air, this outburst when that [African] scene came on the screen.

"People asked me, 'Where did you get the idea to do that?' And I said, 'I didn't get the idea - you did'.

"The cast as a whole had never seen African dance or been exposed to it or African face-painting or masks. I'd grown up seeing all that stuff and I'd assumed throughout the entire film-making process that they'd been exposed to that, too.

"I didn't really understand oppression. It was just an abstract idea to me. Going there and feeling this sense of lack.

"For them there are no art classes for anyone in high school. You go home and mum may not be there, dad may not be there. The kids raise themselves because their parents are drug addicts or in jail. And there's nowhere to go, nothing to do in that neighbourhood. It's a real desert. It's so bleak - that really is oppression."

LOWDOWN

WHO: David LaChapelle, photographer to the stars and video director turned dance-doco maker

WHAT: Rize, his high-energy study of the Los Angeles krumping scene - think breakdancing crossed with something hydraulic

WEBSITE: www.rizethemovie.com

SCREENING: At cinemas from Thursday