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Photos by Sage Gallon courtesy of The Underground.<\/em><\/p>\n Every Wednesday night, street dancers from across Los Angeles meet at a gang-neutral strip mall parking lot in North Hollywood for a krump session. One at a time, dancers with nicknames like Lil “C,” Miss Prissy and Krucial flail their arms, contort their bodies aggressively, and make frantic footwork to a thumping beat. In a few minutes, the dancer\u2019s catharsis is over and it is another one\u2019s turn to \u201cwork it out.\u201d<\/p>\n This is the essence of krump, a Los Angeles-born street dance that along with several other forms of hip-hop movement are the focus of The Underground, a new dance company that will be performing at Cal State Long Beach on Saturday. Instead of guns and thug life, The Underground\u2019s 10 dancers direct their frustration with street living into so-called \u201csessions\u201d like the one in North Hollywood\u2014freestyle dance workshops often held in reclaimed public spaces that attract talented dance groups from all over L.A.\u2019s sprawl.<\/p>\n \u201cSessions are my thinking pad. It\u2019s therapeutic for me,\u201d says Marquisa \u201cMiss Prissy\u201d Gardner, the founder, director and choreographer of The Underground street dance company, who was also featured in David LaChappelle\u2019s 2005 krumping documentary Rize<\/em>. \u201c[The Underground] is the place where we come so that we can make it make sense to the masses.\u201d<\/p>\n Known to many as \u201cThe Queen of Krump,\u201d Miss Prissy is the top female krumper in the city and her classical ballet, tap and jazz training mixed with more than a decade of organic and professional street dance experience (she has toured with Madonna, Snoop Dogg and The Game) makes her the ideal leader for a new company as unique as The Underground.<\/p>\n Though formed last year with support from current company producer Jessica Koslow\u2014who discovered some of the dancers while filming her USC masters thesis on the North Hollywood sessions\u2014The Underground was conceived by Miss Prissy along with choreographic help from another featured Rize<\/em> dancer, Christopher \u201cLil ‘C’\u201d Toler. The all-volunteer company of both Hispanic and black dancers premiered its first live show to a packed house at USC last September and has since performed at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center and will also be featured in the Pasadena Dance Festival in April.<\/p>\n Its series of dance skits, performed with urban props like construction cones and graffiti-covered trashcans, is called \u201cFrom The Streets To The Stage.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are the minority, not just in skin complexion, but where we stand on the totem pole of dance,\u201d says Miss Prissy. \u201cKrumpers, jookers, bone breakers\u2014all of that stuff is definitely part of the new era in hip hop, more than any of those classes being taught in Hollywood that are being called \u2018hip hop\u2019 that are mixing lunges and leaps with belly rolls\u2026 With the street dance, you are dealing with true, natural feeling and placing it on the dance floor whether that be in the street or on a stage, your bathroom or wherever you want to get those emotions out.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to Lil \u201cC\u201d and career krumpers Larry \u201cRuin\u201d Combs, Deidra \u201cKrucial\u201d Cooper-Jenkins, Manny \u201cXclusive\u201d Fernandez, Darren \u201cOutrage\u201d King and Christopher \u201cWorm\u201d Lewis, Miss Prissy\u2019s crew also has members skilled in other street dances like jooking, bonebreaking, popping and locking , footworking and more.<\/p>\n The diversity brought by Chicago-born footworker Charles \u201cKing Charles\u201d Parks, Brooklyn bonebreaker Nicholas \u201cSlick\u201d Stewart and local popper and locker Ricardo \u201cBoogie Frantick\u201d Rodriguez Jr. makes The Underground one of the only dance companies in the country to actively bring a range of street dances into a single cohesive production, one that has the power to bring hip hop dance to wider audiences.<\/p>\n \u201cI kind of want this to be an Avenger-type situation,\u201d says Miss Prissy. \u201cI think what a lot of people don\u2019t understand is that we have our own language. It doesn\u2019t even matter if he\u2019s from Brooklyn or wherever\u2014he\u2019s from the streets. And when you\u2019re from the streets, you already understand the ground; you already understand what to say and what not to say. It\u2019s so much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n A few months ago, CSULB Associate Professor and Head of Acting Hugh O\u2019Gorman reached out to Koslow about bringing The Underground to Long Beach and a free show in honor of Black History Month <\/a>is planned for this weekend. If the show is successful, O\u2019Gorman may bring them back next year as part of the school\u2019s academic programming; the performance raises crucial contemporary discussions on dance, identity, theatre and urban culture.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not necessarily toning down [what happens on the streets], but we\u2019re stylizing it. What would people think if Slick just came out and started breaking his body all crazy like he does? If I can make that make sense to the audience then they can look at it for what it really is, which is art,\u201d says Miss Prissy. \u201c\u2026I feel like this is the best way to get the message out there. You can come from nothing and still be recognized for something you built in your own backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"underground2\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/underground2.jpg\")
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