Krumping (or krump) is a street dance that evolved from African-American street dancing in South Central Los Angeles in the early 2000s. Wikipedia describes it as “characterized by free, expressive, exaggerated, and highly energetic movement,” built from stomps, chest pops, arm swings and jabs, and usually danced in battles and sessions.
Origin
Who Created Krumping
According to Wikipedia, krumping was created by four dancers in South Central Los Angeles during the early 2000s:
- Ceasare “Tight Eyez” Willis
- Jo’Artis “Big Mijo” Ratti
- Marquisa “Miss Prissy” Gardner
- Christopher “Lil’ C” Toler
Clowning Came First
Krump grew out of clowning, which Thomas “Tommy the Clown” Johnson created in 1992 in Compton, California. Wikipedia calls clowning “the less aggressive predecessor to krumping.” Tommy did not create krump himself, but his clowning inspired it, and he started the Battle Zone competition at the Great Western Forum.
The Acronym Is a Backronym
The expansion “Kingdom Radically Uplifted Mighty Praise” is widely repeated, but Wikipedia says the word is “sometimes explained as a backronym” for that phrase. The meaning was attached to an existing word rather than the word being built from it.
Rize (2005)
Krumping reached a mainstream audience through David LaChapelle’s documentary Rize, released by Lions Gate Films on June 24, 2005, as the longer version of an earlier short. The film follows Tommy the Clown, its cast includes Tight Eyez and Big Mijo, and it describes Lil’ C and Miss Prissy as youths who “saw the dance as a way for them to escape gang life.”
How It’s Danced: Glossary of Moves
Definitions from Wikipedia’s krumping entry.
| Term | What it is |
|---|---|
| Stomps | Driving the foot into and up from the ground, so the dancer seems to draw energy from the floor |
| Jabs | ”A short, sharp, staccato movement of the arms” |
| Chest pops | ”An upward motion of the chest in the same manner as breathing into the lungs” |
| Arm swings | ”Moving an arm in a sweeping motion aided by gravity”; small swings resemble pitching a baseball, big swings use the whole arm like a bat |
| Buck hop | One of the five basic moves |
| Buck | ”An adjective used to describe someone who excels in krump” |
On Screen
Beyond Rize, Wikipedia lists krumping in music videos including Missy Elliott’s “I’m Really Hot,” the Black Eyed Peas’ “Hey Mama,” the Chemical Brothers’ “Galvanize” and Madonna’s “Hung Up”; in films including Step Up, Stomp the Yard and Climax; and on TV in So You Think You Can Dance and America’s Best Dance Crew.
The International Scene
Krump now has an international battle circuit. The European Buck Session (EBS) has been hosted annually by tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf, Germany, since 2009, and the venue describes it as “the world’s largest Krump event.” The 2023 edition ran from 8 to 10 September.