Rize.

Rize

* Directed by David LaChapelle * Lions Gate

Watching gay photographer David LaChapelle's riveting documentary Rize (out nationwide June 24), I couldn't help but think about the trademark abstracted dance moves of high-gloss pop stars like Britney, Justin, and Usher. Their steps are stunning, sure, but rarely filled with any expressive purpose beyond their virtuosity--yeah, those stars can move, but they never move me.

The south-central Los Angeles dancers LaChapelle captures in Rize not only move, they move with blistering speed and force. It's hip-hop meets tribal, athleticism meets artistry. Their organically grown style, called krumping, stems from a deep-seated urge to express the pent-up frustration over the drugs, crime, and poverty that surround them--and to escape from that as well. Krumping derived from (no kidding) clowning at a kids' birthday party, championed by an ebullient man of the people who goes by the name Tommy the Clown. By the time Rize is being filmed, dozens of separate clown groups have formed: One woman muses on camera that for young people in south-central L.A. it's either the gangs or the clowns. Of course, clowns have rivalries too: One of the film's best sequences is a show-stopping dance-off between Tommy's disciples and a group of edgier krumpers who have spun off to pursue something harder. Harder, but not homophobic--or even, remarkably, misogynistic.

The breakneck movements we see are often pelvic and the bodies lithe and chiseled, but it's never basely carnal, and the female dancers are equals, not objects. Their intricately improvised body jazz has clearly entranced LaChapelle, at times to the detriment of a richer picture of these kids' larger stories, but no matter. As Paris Is Burning did with voguing, Rize celebrates a vital new art form; don't you dare blink.