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'Rize' soars along with South Central dancers

By BOB LONGINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Blink and you might miss a whole slew of lightning-quick moves from the seemingly electricity-jolted kids in the infectious Los Angeles street dance documentary "Rize."

The dance gyrations often come so fast and so furious that this movie starts off with onscreen written assurance that the film itself has not been speeded up.

Lion's Gate Films

'Rize'

The verdict: Interesting, watchable excursion into the dance of the hour.

Director: David LaChapelle
Starring: Tommy the Clown
Run time: 84 minutes
Release date: June 24, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for suggestive content, drug references, language and brief nudity.
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On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

Much like the theatricality of Stomp or the Blue Man Group, "Rize" celebrates performance art. In this case, it emanates not from the Broadway stage, but from South Central L.A., where groups of kids and young adults create mesmerizing street dances.

There's "clowning," a form of hip-hop dancing developed by Tommy the Clown (aka Tommy Johnson), a South Central fixture whose birthday party performances have become must-see street theater. And there's "krumping," an offshoot of clowning with a kind of militaristic veneer championed by Tommy's former protege, Lil' C.

Directed by fashion photographer-videographer David LaChapelle (he gave us Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" video), "Rize" digs deep into both genres, highlighting not only the dancing, but the background stories of the everyday people who've taken up the artform. Plus, the film takes a quick dip into "stripper dancing," the controversial and popular movements seen in many mainstream rap videos.

Naturally, LaChapelle emphasizes the visuals — sometimes to distraction. Some dancers are seen in stylized presentations, their bodies stripped of most clothing and doused with water. They gyrate, often in slow motion, against, say, the backdrop of a deep blue sky. It might as well be a single-frame image in Vogue or Vibe and has as much to do with dancing as an Abercrombie & Fitch ad does clothes.

But at other times "Rize" soars, especially when LaChapelle employs cinema verite, sending his camera into the buzz-saw motion of dancers who've naturally congregated at parks to do their stuff. Here, we're just fly-on-the-wall observers to dancing that's a kind of Holy Roller-palooza. Some kids get into the spirit and their bodies erupt.

It's here where the art form lives and breathes.

And, man, does it ever move.