Week 12: 'You wanna battle me?'

Wonderdate: 2005

Wondered into being by: Tight Eyez et al

Wonderspan: 6 mi

To experience this wonder at its best: Click on the full screen icon and make sure you can hear the sound.

This week we're in Los Angeles, its South Central district.  It's the most dangerous neighbourhood in the city and one of the most violent in the industrialised world.  Four people are murdered there every week, usually by gunshot, and many more are seriously injured in street violence include drive-by shootings.  Victims are typically Latino and Black people in their late teens and early twenties.

In South Central, some young people have turned to dance as a way of prising some freedom and dignity from the oppressive injustices of their environment.  For many, their dance groups are an alternative to joining one of the territorial gangs.

One such group do their street dancing in clowning make-up.  Each dancer crafts a mask to suit their own personality.  The clowns were started by 'Tommy the Clown' Johnson, a local birthday party entertainer who combined an outrageous clown costume with the cutting edge hip-hop style of the 1990s.  He found himself mentoring teenagers to do the same and went on to organise huge face-offs or 'battles' between the various dance 'tribes'.
 
An early member of Tommy's clowns was Tight Eyez.  He explained in David LaChapelle's documentary film Rize how dancing had helped save his community from becoming empty vessels for commercial culture to fill:

‘We’re not gonna be clones of the commercial hip-hop world... because that's been seen for so many years.  … [A]nother generation of kids with morals and values ... won’t need ... what’s being commercialized or tailor-made for them...  And we're of more value than any piece of jewellery... or any car or any big house that anybody could buy.’

Tight Eyez went on to pioneer krumping.  Krumpers turn the energy of the violence that runs through the neighbourhood into a cathartic dance.  In krump sessions the dancers throw each other against a fence or wall or squirm on the floor as if they are being beaten; they get bruised but no-one gets really hurt.  The dance movements are aggressive, extremely energetic and all improvised.  As the energy rises, the dancers reach a state of ecstasy called 'getting buck', when all the pent-up energy is released into the dance.

In the clip, we see the clowns and the krumps battling it out, overseen by their universally respected host, Tommy the Clown.  Tight Eyez features too - he's the guy who starts off his callout by smashing a chair into the stage.

These dances are among the most vivid ways I've seen people loving freedom.

• www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw5D38axdnE

Extra...

Here's Tight Eyez a few years later in a face-off with a guy called Retro, who's a turfer (smooth, mechanical cybernetic-type techno-dystopian... ohh, I dunno what it is exactly).

• www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITkHMe1P-iM