Black Dance Matters
Uniting Cultures with Roundz of Flame
RISE YOUR POWER!!! In times of release, the factors of life and all the life threats we have to be cautious of, strictly pressures all measures into a compressed feeling some of us are yet to understand. Breaking thru the containment of society can come off beastly, untamed, naked and ultimately unapologetic. Bottling up your purpose for life and self is no more. Find your calling within the universe. Know your power. Unleash the Gods within!
–Tyrell “Rocka” Jamez
Tyrell “Rocka” Jamez — a New York-based Krump, Flexn, and Contemporary dancer — has created a community of innovative, vernacular dance cultures through his platform Roundz of Flame (ROF). Providing live DJ events, themed citywide cyphers, sessions, and dance battles on a monthly basis since 2017, ROF brings together underground scenes that wouldn’t necessarily cross paths even before COVID-19 demanded more societal separation. Attending an after-hours ROF cypher at Washington Square Park, you can have a casual conversation with the stunning and powerful Krump King of the East Coast, Brian “Hallow Dreamz” Henry, aka “Lil Mijo,” while witnessing an electrifying, free-form performance by young Flexn OG, Huwer Anthony Marche, Jr., aka “King Havoc.” Choice member of the ROF family, the inimitable perfectionist King Havoc found notoriety as a featured soloist in Beyoncé’s 2019 concert film Homecoming. Hallow Dreamz, a 2017 TEDx speaker who you may recognize from director Spike Lee’s film BlacKkKlansman, is sought after as the creator of Brooklyn Buck, an original Krump language. Away from staged spectacle and commodification, ROF artists demand recognition and respect on their own terms.
ROF is a gateway to accessing dance styles spanning time and place — including Breaking, Dancehall, Bruk Up, Flexn, Krump, Litefeet, Afrobeat, Popping, House, Waacking and Vogue — and has expanded the creative dialogue of New York’s dance community. In an environment of competition, specialization, and industry neglect, ROF was designed to provide a true sanctum of unification and energy. Rocka, aka “Hallow Rocka,” who grew up in Crown Heights with a Trinidadian mother and a Garifuna father of Hondurasian-Belizean descent, explains his mission as ROF’s leader: “We are trying to build an academy for all dancers, within all cultures, to be at home to learn, understand, grow, and train. Dancers who do not have the opportunity to teach can have that access to spread the true knowledge of street dance cultures without commercial distraction. It’s about the truth.”
In partnership with the Performance Project, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the University Settlement, ROF holds free public events announced via Rocka’s online platform @roundzofflame. Sessions begin in the afternoon and run deep into the night. Locations vary where ROF’s crowds of hundreds gather, and now that it has been forced outdoors due to the pandemic, anyone in the vicinity bears witness. ROF is home to some of the greatest dancers in the world including Rocka himself — a 2019 Showtime NYC All Styles Battle champion and founding member of the dance trio NUU Knynez (The K9z). Joining Rocka in The K9z are Hallow Dreamz and David “Twice Light” Adelaja, a fellow Krumper who also dances Footwork and House. The K9z function as a democratic dance unit, modeling the ROF philosophy of autonomous unity. They are winners of the 2014 Amateur Night at the Apollo and appear as consultants in The History of the Dap documentary presented by Chadwick Boseman for the production of Spike Lee’s latest film, Da 5 Bloods. All members speak the common idiom of Krump while also cultivating their own, individual voices. On special occasions, Rocka will inject the late-night, elite cypher with his interdisciplinary genius, fusing Krump with free Contemporary through his innovation, ContempoKRUMP. As the visual artist behind FireCry Fashion, a clothing brand producing custom painted garments, Rocka proves that dance is as much visual as it is kinetic. Washington Park or Wakanda? Nope. It’s Rocka time.
Ambition can be the assistance to your motivation, a vision of your destiny before reaching it, and most likely, the credit to your story.
–Tyrell “Rocka” Jamez
Taking over one park at a time! Because I love y’all!
–Tyrell “Rocka” Jamez
A grand hand to hold and be held. First one must saddle up off the ego’s high horse. Enjoy the ride.
–David “Twice Light” Adelaja
Unbeknownst to many passers-by of Union Square and Washington Square Park, these artists, largely grounded in African-based traditions, do not make art for art’s sake. Their invention is grounded in age-old, Afro-Atlantic practices and purpose. The dancers deploy styles connecting South Central’s Krump, Harlem’s Litefeet, and Brooklyn-born Bruk Up and Flexn. Bruk Up (“broken” in Jamaican patois), is a grim, avant-garde genre that emerged out of Brooklyn in the mid 1990s. It consists of a basic structure involving a combination of shoulder popping, framing, pivoting, locking and liquid motion. Its lyrical progeny, Flexn, with its glides and wavy contortionism, can be framed as an extension of Hip Hop. A fusion of Dancehall and Popping, Bruk Up and Flexn embody the cutting edge of Black culture. Brooklyn is not alone in its revolutionary influence — Krump and Litefeet have also pushed Hip Hop into the future from coast to coast.
We all rose individually from different tribes and eras of the streets and here we are taking back our home, our truth, our street culture, our come up, our beginning. Roundz of Flame in the streets saga. We gonna keep raising the cause every event! Shout out to King Havoc for always being there as our young OG of Flexn. There’s no other.
–Tyrell “Rocka” Jamez
The term Krump or K.R.U.M.P., which stands for “Kingdom Radically Uplift Mighty Praise,” infuses this hard, heavy metal, free-form genre with focused intention. Fostering self-healing and reinforcing insider values, so-called street dance, just like gang culture, was born out of necessity. In Los Angeles, Ceasare “Tight Eyez” Willis and Jo’Artis “Big Mijo” Ratti created an aggressive, visceral body language that became the vehicle for escaping gang life and THE release valve of raw emotion. Through the basic vocabulary of Krump — upright chestpops, stomps, jabs, and arm swings — Krumpers use their own version of a traditional praise culture for the exchange and transmutation of energy on a collective level. Rocka explains: “Krump to me is expressing your praise for existence in the most prideful energy. Accepting the pain, the sorrow, and the joyful moods of how we expose ourselves to the dance. We are The Underground, and everything that comes with that made us who we are!”
Of course lost people judge you. People who haven’t accepted themselves can’t accept anyone else.
–Brian “Hallow Dreamz” Henry
SHINING… It represents the light that’s in the darkness.
–Huwer Anthony Marche, Jr., aka “King Havoc”
Night ascendancy…
–Huwer Anthony Marche, Jr., aka “King Havoc”
Summer 2020 ROF gatherings have served as sacred spaces for refuge during an unprecedented time. Threat, danger, and death are nothing new for marginalized people in the United States. COVID-19 poses no fear for artists who understand the basic and universal necessity of spiritual transcendence through art and culture. They prove that no amount of physical distancing can separate us socially. If anything, they welcome more open spaces where they can gather and perform. As Hallow Dreamz says: “It’s never just me, even when it is just me.” The joy and kinship in the air is palpable.
Although Black vernacular dance culture has often been framed as a form of protest, activism is just one aspect of the truths enacted in these cyphers and battles. At ROF, life gets worked out in motion, addressing any issue at hand and always pointing towards self-realization. Addressing fundamental needs through Africanized body talk, Black dance is a way of life. Marking important rights of passage and everyday personal moments of joy and pain, the brilliant force of dance improvisation ushers bodies into a new reality whether in New York, Kingston, or Lagos. Dalmar “Devil Dreamz” Nation, a young Krump dancer of Haitian and Jamaican descent, explains the dance’s power to liberate: “Freedom of expression with no judgment. Feeling joy with no weight. When you reflect on your values, you realize how much you are worth and that holds the greatest weight. When you see me, you see the tribe. A tribe is only as strong as its members, each one holding a piece of our legacy. Our actions hold the key to our future. We just have to know that we are worth it.” These dancers hold vital lessons for 2020: chase the sound, embody the music, be free through community.
Born in Prague, Dr. Petra Richterová is a leading-edge music photographer, filmmaker, and an Assistant Professor of African and African-American Art History at the Savannah College of Art and Design. She spends her time between Savannah, New York, and Havana. More about all at petrarichterovaphoto.com and @petrarichterovaphotography.
