Rize Response

Art has always been a medium for true, unadulterated, emotional expression. Sadly, art has also taken on an unfairly pretentious audience and group of critics that will only accept art if it is formally presented. Galleries, museums, theaters, have become the accepted means of displaying art. The film Rize, however, works to show that expressive art can exist anywhere and take any form. Dancers take the streets of Los Angeles and move their bodies in ways that many of todays audience and critics would object to calling it crass, vulgar, and sexualized. What it is really called is true art.

The movie focuses on two forms of urban dance: clowning and krumping. Both feature moves that are fast, bold, even angry. This aggressive nature of the dance is what makes art. In a culture so overrun with gang dominance, it seems impossible to let out emotions in any way other than violence. The people in the film, however, manage to take their aggression and anger and channel it into an art form. Their art is not censored, or distilled, or compromised in anyway for any audience. 

People in the film refer to the dance as their, “Ghetto ballet,” because to them it is as prestigious and true, if not more so, as something put on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Culture is informed by community, and this Los Angeles community is informed by art. A life of artistic expression is truly the culture of the dancer in the movie.

~ Connor D.