NOT JUST DANCING IN THE L.A. STREETS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

ACROBATIC and kinetic as sparking severed power lines, clowning and its offshoot dance movement krumping are unbelievably engaging movie subjects.

If ``Rize,'' renowned fashion photographer David LaChapelle's documentary about South Central L.A.'s coolest new cultural phenomenon, stuck only to the rapidly syncopated sight-and-sound, it would be a completely satisfying sit.

But the film does much more. It gives a dozen or so of these fantastically talented kids, their mentors (and, in some cases, their own younger acolytes) and parents their say. It places the art form within a social context of privation and poverty, and traces it back through the history of urban unrest and all the way to African tribal traditions.

One relieved mother puts it all in perspective as her son paints his face in preparation for one of the movement's exuberant dance-offs: ``I don't want him to be a Blood. I don't want him to be a Crip. I want him to be a Clown!''

Sort of a hyperspeed hip-hop (the movie opens with a disclaimer that no footage was artificially time-lapsed), clowning is the brainchild of one Tommy Johnson. An ex-con who wanted to get his life in order, Johnson became the children's party entertainer Tommy the Clown. As some members of his delighted audience grew older, they wanted to learn how to dance in clown face like that. Johnson opened a clown dancing school as an alternative to gangs, drugs and other neighborhood despairs.

Krumping channeled the same wild moves into more conscious expressions/releases of anger (there are also offshoots such as stripper dancing - which, despite its salacious gyrations, probably leaves practitioners too exhausted for inappropriate sex afterward - and a krump-for-Christ sect). The different crews are immensely proud and compete ferociously with one another, but always maintain respectful and friendly relations when they're not hurling themselves at each other in violent choreography.

Just because these kids keep their aggression to the fantasy dance ground doesn't mean they're invulnerable to tragedy. Death, crime and indignity stalk their streets, and even the beloved Tommy is not immune. Still, rarely has a film about the underprivileged felt as positive, in a completely un-Pollyanna-ish way, as ``Rize'' does.

And I don't recall ever having seen one that was so musically, muscularly watchable.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

RIZE - Three and one half stars

(PG-13: language, violence, nudity, racism)

Director: David LaChapelle.

Running time: 1 hr. 24 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Fantastic-looking, sociologically astute documentary about the energetic new dance forms expressing anger and hope in South Central L.A.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Lil C, left, and Tight Eyes perform an energetic dance style known as krumping in the documentary ``Rize.''