The George Floyd protest krump that went viral
Body language carries shared humanity that needs no translation
Jo’artis Ratti is sure he looked intimidating to the police officers who were suddenly confronted by his agitated dancing at a California protest Sunday.
“I’m 210 pounds,” Ratti said. “I have tattoos on my neck. I don’t have a passive energy. I’m very enthusiastic. And I know this looks unfamiliar.”
So at the demonstration in Santa Monica, after he’d jabbed the air and flung his arms open, after he’d stomped his feet and thrust his broadly muscled chest forward, unmistakably telegraphing defiance, confidence and strength, Ratti, 35, stopped and said to his wary audience in riot gear: “Bro, I’m here for peace.”
Video of Ratti’s astonishingly vigorous display quickly went viral, generating admiration as well as confusion. Some commenters were as baffled as the police: What was going on here?
Ratti, who goes by Big Mijo in dance circles, was krumping. He’s one of the founders of this hard-hitting competitive street dance from South Central Los Angeles. It arose in the 1990s and early 2000s as a corporeal art that channels life in black and brown communities after the Rodney King riots, amid police and gang violence, poverty and drugs. Krump is characterized by outsized muscular attack, far more aggressive than hip-hop. Dancers can look like they’re undergoing uncontrollable spasms, or that their bodies are flying apart one moment, snapping back together the next. Throughout fierce bursts of energy and raw emotional displays, the top dancers’ muscles are so finely controlled, it looks like video trickery is involved.
Mainstream culture was quick to spot the entertainment potential of krump. Madonna, Mariah Carey and Beyoncé have taken krump dancers, including Ratti, on tour, and he and fellow dancers appeared in David Lachapelle’s beautifully made, well-regarded 2005 documentary on krump, “Rize.”
But as krump has journeyed from the streets to screens and stages, it remains a protest art. And that’s why Ratti used it to improvise on a lifetime of rage and despair within a few feet of a police line.
The result is one of the most poignant images to come out of the past week of protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police — and the story behind Ratti’s dancing, and what followed, is just as poignant.
What’s initially striking in the videos is the brawly look of Ratti’s body language. He lifts his arms and thrusts a fist, but it hits nothing, breaks nothing and it isn’t meant to. The pantomime of head-butting and jabbing, with moments when his whole body crumples as if in grief, lasts mere seconds. Every gesture is sharp but evanescent, vanishing as quickly as it takes shape. This is a man palpably baring his pain, anger and rebelliousness, and then holding his peace.
Then there’s the immensity of the barrier that Ratti is up against — armed law enforcement — and the futility of one fragile and vulnerably positioned person trying to communicate with it, even with a fellow dancer, his friend Samantha Donohue, buckling and stomping next to him.
Powerful choreography such as this is happening across the country and beyond. Where demonstrators have gathered in Floyd’s name to decry racism and police brutality, the streets have become dance floors. Protesters are tapping into dance’s power as an act of rebellion as well as connection, a way to express ineffable emotions and share those emotions with others.
“There aren’t a lot of masculine men who dance,” Ratti said in a phone interview from North Hollywood, “and that’s what keeps me motivated to do it. To show people that you can let your guard down and be vulnerable through art.”
In Puerto Rico, protesters have launched into rippling bomba moves, rooted in the island’s slave history. In New Zealand, groups have performed the Haka, an ancient Maori war dance of forceful pride and unity.
And at a Newark demonstration, a police officer gently rolled his arms and shuffled his feet to the beat of the music as he wordlessly invited children into his dance. One little girl accepted — and upped the ante by dropping into splits. Everyone cheered.
All of these dances, so vastly different, hook us in the same way. They tell a story through visceral means that need no translation. We see what inclusion looks like in the Newark officer’s beckoning gesture. What self-confidence and assertiveness look like in a child throwing down a killer move. Even those who’ve never heard of krump can feel the anger, distress and courage in Ratti’s actions. In these spontaneous displays we recognize our own behaviors of defiance and triumph.