This street style dance form unleashes creativity

As a way to express raw emotions in a creative way, dancers Ceasare ‘Tight Eyez’ Willis, and Jo’ Artis ‘Big Mijo’ Ratti from South Central, Los Angeles, developed a street dance called krumping. Because of its unique features that are appealing to youngsters, this popular storytelling dance form is gaining popularity in Chennai too. To promote it among Chennaiites, two dancers — Jayanth Joseph and Raghavan Pugazh started a community called Chennai Super Krump. A dancer who performs krumping is called a krumper.

Before krumping, there was another style called clowning where dancers paint their faces and perform clowning at parties and other functions. “Krumping is entirely freestyle, improvisational dance form and is rarely choreographed. It’s different from other hip-hop dance styles and is danced to fast-paced music. Since it is performed in battles or sessions instead of on a stage, it may look aggressive for on-lookers. But krump doesn’t promote aggression or fighting. The powerful dance moves are meant to take up space and challenge other dancers to feed off and return the energy,” says Jayanth.

The first krumper from Chennai is Ranjith Anand and it was Nadarasa aka Asura from the UK, who introduced the dance form to India and spread it to Chennaiites. “A few years ago, I participated in a krump workshop held by Arun. Generally, krump groups are called Fams and the senior member will be Big Homie, who is the teacher. Students are called Lil Homies. So, my Big Homie was Arun and now, I’ve become a Big Homie. Each krumper can have a krump name/character and they have to discover it by themselves. I go with the krump name Funkybuck,” he explains.  

There are four basic moves in krump — jabs, stomps, chest pops, and arm swings. Once you master the moves, you can tell stories through dance. “It’s a way of expressing emotions and I can assure that a person would feel good after a few sessions of krumping. You dance with so much energy and emotions — when compared to other dance styles, krump has more freedom,” assure the 29-year-old.

There are 20 active krumpers in the city. Jayanth, Lady Asura aka Sangeethavani and Hunter aka Isai Pradeep are among the top three. There are three other krumping groups in Tamil Nadu — Rugged Krump Heatz (Coimbatore), Trichy Krump Revolution (Tiruchy) and one in Salem (Slm 636002), which are all part of the umbrella, South Indian Krump Umberalla South Side Allies.

For 22-year-old senior analyst, Sai Kamali Krishnan, krumping is a way of unleashing her creativity. “I met Jayanth when I joined United by Dance community and he introduced me to krumping. I got connected to it easily – I felt more alive and happy while performing krump. I practise from home or at the dance studio.