Dance in Film · 2005
Rize (2005)
David LaChapelle's documentary about krumping and clowning in South Central Los Angeles — raw, powerful street dance as protest and release.
Rize is a 2005 dance documentary centred on Street & Funk Styles. For dancers, it's a chance to see the style performed on screen — the phrasing, partnering, and musicality that the same dances carry onto a real floor.
Jump to the 18 indexed dance sequences ↓
Dance styles featured
Where to watch: Streaming (various)
Trailer
Official trailer.
The dance sequences in Rize
18 sequences — what is danced, by whom, and where to find it.
1992 riot-beating movement tableau
Danced by four women in the staged 1992 street tableau (not individually identified)
The women beside the parked cars pounding empty air around a hunched captive figure.
Beside a row of parked cars, two women swing invisible batons at a third performer who folds forward with her hands held behind her back; a fourth joins until the blows become a synchronized pattern. LaChapelle places the moving bodies immediately after the Watts and 1992 fire footage, so the repeated fists turn a news-history transition into a deliberately choreographed image of force.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Battle Zone
KrumpingDanced by Clown dancers; krump dancers
Opposing crews, costume and audience response give the event a readable ritual structure beyond individual tricks.
The coverage alternates between adjudicator-style wide views and reaction shots without abandoning the routine's structure. Clear musical hits, difficulty peaks and formation changes create a legible competitive arc, making the result feel earned on the floor.
Battle Zone team rounds — clown side
Danced by Battle Zone clown teams; Tommy the Clown
The clown bench firing soloists into the forum floor while the score keeps changing overhead.
As “You Wanna Battle Wit Me?” begins, clown dancers cycle through the forum floor with broad faces, heel-to-toe footwork and deliberately showy challenges aimed across the center line. Tommy and the waiting team frame each solo from the stage edge, so the children's-party vocabulary now has a scoreboard, opposing bench and thousands of witnesses.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Battle Zone team rounds — krump side
KrumpingDanced by Battle Zone krump crews; Tight Eyez; Lil' C; Dragon
The krump huddle releasing another dancer into the late rounds with the scoreboard at 7–4.
The song's late reprise catches the krump crew huddled around a younger dancer before another performer is sent into the center under a seven-to-four score. Floor-level shots stay close to the stomps, chest pops and arm throws, letting the krump side's warrior posture read against the white-clad clown bench just a few feet away.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Battle Zone women's feature — La Niña's clowning
Danced by La Niña; Battle Zone clown team
La Niña carrying clowning into the arena as the giant crowd rises behind the score graphic.
The emcee calls La Niña first, and she brings the clown side's quick directional changes and audience-facing taunts into the Great Western Forum spotlight. The scoreboard and the red-clad team visible at the stage edge turn every comic feint into a point-scoring proposition rather than a birthday-party bit.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Battle Zone women's feature — Miss Prissy's krump
KrumpingDanced by Miss Prissy; Battle Zone krump team
Miss Prissy's nighttime alter ego arriving with the first krumper point on the board.
Miss Prissy answers the same women's feature by shedding the poised persona described in her interview and driving her shoulders and rib cage straight at the clown side. When the on-screen score awards the krumpers the first point, her red jersey and loose hair remain centered against an audience that has become part of the battle's roar.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Dragon's garage testimony becomes church krump
KrumpingDanced by Dragon; church dancers and congregants (not individually identified)
The yellow-skirted dancer driving krump gestures through the narrow aisle beside the pulpit.
Dragon's account of getting krump in his garage crosses into a small sanctuary where a man folds his torso over a swinging arm and a woman in a yellow skirt answers with stabbing hands. Chairs, flower stands and the pulpit stay visible behind them, making “I dance from my spirit” literal without disguising the movement as a staged concert.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Final body tableaux
KrumpingDanced by Los Angeles clown and krump dancers
Portrait lighting and slowed movement insist on sculptural control beneath the form's explosive surface.
Editing and production design move between physical space and a heightened performance world without losing the dancers' bodily through-line. The choreography externalizes thought through scale, repetition and contrast, so the sequence lands as an argument made in movement.
Krump session and battle-of-the-sexes circle
KrumpingDanced by Lil' C; Tight Eyez; Miss Prissy; Dragon; featured krump-session dancers
The woman and man squaring up inside the fence-ring before the shirtless solo tears through it.
Under fluorescent lights, a dancer in camouflage drives through the ring before the session cuts outdoors to a woman and man meeting chest-first at the fence. The circle later opens for a shirtless solo whose repeated arm swings and torso blows answer Lil' C's explanation that the dancers can push one another without the contact becoming a street fight.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Krump street session
KrumpingDanced by Tight Eyez; Lil' C; Miss Prissy; krump dancers
High-speed photography and close proximity magnify chest pops and emotional attack without sanitizing the circle.
Tracking shots and rhythmic cutting borrow energy from the dancers while repeatedly returning to frames that show complete actions. The choreography answers accents with changes of level, direction and texture, making the scene feel driven by the music rather than pasted onto it.
Lil' Mama and the children's party showcase
Danced by Lil' Mama; Tommy the Clown; Tommy's Hip-Hop Clowns; party children
Lil' Mama being called into the middle as the adults and children close a cheering ring around her.
The soundtrack calls “Come on, Lil' Mama” as the camera drops to the children's height and gives the young dancer the cleared party space. Tommy's troupe keeps the circle alive with swoops, shoulder shakes and exaggerated faces, while the watching children's smiles supply the reaction beat that distinguishes this showcase from the earlier Malik routine.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Malik's curbside birthday clown circle
Danced by Tommy the Clown; Tommy's Hip-Hop Clowns; Malik; party children
A child taking the asphalt center while Tommy watches in full rainbow clown costume.
Tommy's rainbow suit and white face anchor a curbside ring while a boy in an oversized white shirt attacks the center beside two portable speakers. When the crowd calls for Malik's birthday hits, the clown walk, heel-to-toe steps and comic mugging turn the party game into a performance that keeps children pressed close to the circle.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Oh Happy Day — rooftop body tableaux
KrumpingDanced by featured Rize dancers (not individually identified)
Silver and bronze dancers opening their bodies toward the blue sky as the gospel refrain repeats.
“Oh Happy Day” lifts the film onto a rooftop and beach-front horizon where bronze- and silver-painted bodies repeat chest strikes, opened fists and upward-reaching arms against an unbroken blue sky. LaChapelle isolates a woman pitching her hair backward and a gleaming shirtless man holding his arms wide, converting the session's crowded pressure into a sequence of monumental solo icons.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Soar — beach and family-pressure solo montage
KrumpingDanced by Tight Eyez; Baby Tight Eyez; featured Rize dancers
The solitary beach dancer suspended against the violet sky and Santa Monica Pier lights.
Christina Aguilera's “Soar” carries the film from Baby Tight Eyez's family argument to a lone dancer carving the Santa Monica beach in silhouette, the Ferris wheel glowing behind his raised arm. LaChapelle slows the airborne reach and the landing enough to let vulnerability enter a vocabulary the preceding sessions presented as explosive.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Stripper-dance and African clown-walk demonstration
Danced by clown-group dancers and demonstrators (not individually identified)
The bedroom demonstration combining the plain stripper dance with face paint and the clown walk.
A face-painted dancer uses the cramped bedroom floor beside a cartoon bedspread to isolate the stripper dance's hip-and-torso pulse, then folds it into the African clown walk. The direct demonstrations answer the film's repeated “What's the stripper dance?” question step by step, and the room's low ceiling makes each rebound and shoulder snap look deliberately oversized.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Title-sequence street krump ritual
KrumpingDanced by Dragon; featured Rize krump dancers
Dragon's painted face giving way to the sun-struck street circle and its full-body hits.
Dragon appears in a tight face-painted close-up before the film releases the frame into the cracked street circle, where chest strikes, thrown elbows and stomps travel from one dancer to the next. The low sun flashes through the fence behind a dancer driving both forearms across his torso, making the title sequence's promise of krump as a bodily answer to the riot archive concrete.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
Tommy the Clown demonstration
Danced by Tommy Johnson; Hip Hop Clowns
Direct-to-camera explanation and neighborhood context establish clowning's bounce and character before spectacle.
Observational coverage keeps the dancers' full bodies and surrounding community in view, using close-ups mainly to reveal effort and response. Because the film lets attempts, corrections and recoveries remain visible, the sequence shows how the dance is made rather than presenting only a polished result.
Vacant-lot krump introduction
KrumpingDanced by Lil' C; Tight Eyez; Dragon; Miss Prissy; featured krump dancers
The vacant-lot establishing shot breaking open into the first packed krump circle.
A wide view of an empty South Los Angeles lot gives way to a handheld ring in which a shirtless dancer snaps his chest and shoulders while the surrounding crew leans into every hit. Lil' C and Tight Eyez's distinction between clowning and krumping lands against bodies that stop smiling, dig into the pavement and treat the circle as a pressure-release chamber.
Stream or rental only — the timestamp is for when you have it playing.
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