Dancing like a clown the hot new hip-hop trend

Not so long ago, it was a bad thing if you danced like a clown.

Now it’s the “in” thing.

Clown dancing, or krumping, is a hot hip-hop dance trend. The movement that started in Los Angeles is winding its way around the globe thanks to new music videos and an acclaimed documentary.

Krumping started with Tommy Johnson, aka Tommy the Clown, in 1992 in Compton, Calif. Johnson was performing at a children’s birthday party with a group from his church.

“I came up with Tommy the Hip-Hop Dancing Clown, and the kids loved it,” he explains. “I started going through the neighborhood every day promoting it.”

Johnson’s act quickly caught on. He established a troupe of hip-hop clowns, mostly neighborhood teens, who dress up and perform at parties, schools and clubs around Los Angeles. Impromptu clown battle dances began popping up in the city’s parking lots and schoolyards.

Not only do krumpers frenetically dance like clowns, they look like them, too.

“Painting your face is really important,” Johnson says. “That’s what makes it clowning.”

There are no set moves to krumping, which is done at a hyperfast speed and mixes herky-jerky break-dance and martial-arts-style moves with spasmodic booty shaking.

“It’s freestyle; we go with the flow,” says Johnson, who coined the term “krumping.”

Now krumping is moving from the West Coast to the mainstream thanks to dancers clowning around in videos by Missy Elliott (“I’m Really Hot”), the Black Eyed Peas (“Hey Mama”) and Christina Aguilera (“Dirrty”).

“Krumped,” a documentary by director-photographer David LaChappelle, was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

“The Missy Elliott video is really cool; it’s putting krumping on the national scale,” Johnson says.