TREVON Stanley lives for krumpin. Most nights of the week you'll find him in an LA car park, schoolyard, park or perhaps even a mall if there's enough room to dance. Most nights he will practise, other nights he will battle.

And it really does look like a battle. Their faces streaked with colourful war paint, krumpers challenge one another with frenetic martialarts moves and tribal war-dance stomping. One minute they're shuffling and jerking as if fitting, the next leaping, bumping chests, kicking out their legs and flailing their arms at great speed, throwing themselves to the ground, spinning, thrusting themselves to their feet, all the time staring out their opponent.

It's far less straightforward and much more aggressive than breakdancing. "It has more energy than breaking and there aren't as many f lips, " says Trevon. "There are ground moves like breaking but performed very differently. I tend to get krump to hip-hop with ferocious lyrics, a lot of bass, not too up-tempo, and hard beats. Songs such as Get 'Em Girls by Cam'ron and Cassidy's I'm a Hustla. The beat of the music and lyrics give us a lot of energy."

When David Lachapelle, the photographer and filmmaker, first saw a dance-off in Compton, he wondered if the inner-city teenagers were hurting themselves. "It's a completely new way of moving your body, " he said, several months later. "You can't believe what you're watching.

It's insane. You've never seen bodies move that fast. These kids are creating an art form from nothing.

It's inspiring."

Krumpin is a darker, more brooding version of clown dancing, a dance movement that began to take off in California about four years ago. It is generally agreed that it began when Thomas Johnson, or Tommy the Clown, mixed the traditional clowning he would perform at his local church and breakdancing, as a response to the 1992 Rodney King riots. Essentially, he was just trying to find something to do.

As a trouble-shooting measure, community outreach workers could never have made it up. Trevon, 15, and his friends meet up with people of all ages from different cities and racial backgrounds. Nobody is really taking much notice of who is from where, just who is krumpin whom, and who has what moves.

It's highly athletic, so it's not like you can keep up if you have an unhealthy lifestyle, either.

"I think krumpin was started by kids not wanting to dance happy and nice, " says Trevon. "They wanted to dance a lot more aggressive, as if they were fighting, so all the anger was released and they had an outlet from the world. The thing I love about getting krump is that all the anger I have locked inside I can release in a positive way instead of inflicting pain on myself or others. Plus, it releases me from thinking about not being like everyone else."

The groups of pioneering dancers, Tru Clowns and Cartoonz Family, developed the healthy competitive element of dance sessions. "Rivalry fuels us to perform our best against our opponent, " says Trevon. "Getting krump is for the competition, the respect and to get your name out there and be known in the krump world and to better yourself.

Krump has a lot of emotion to it, and also morals."

Krumpin's early enthusiasts were keen to disassociate themselves from gang culture. Johnson, in particular, was conscious of not creating a territorial dance like the Crip Walk, which involved spelling out a rival's name with footwork and erasing it. "We didn't want to be associated with the Crips, " he told one magazine. "So where they did the dance with a gangster style, we made ours all crazy."

With clowning and krumpin, originality and dedication are the currency for gaining the respect of your peers, not bling, women and bravado. Although beating the opposition is important, it's also vital that you guard the friendships within your crew. Many krumpers speak of their fellow dancers as being like a family to them. As Invent advised his krump friends on a messageboard: "Don't focus on moves. It's more about versatility of your members. Y'all should have different styles, different strengths that you bring to the table. A crew shouldn't just be a couple of jokers you picked up off the street.

"It should be people you know, or have gotten to know, people you trust, people you know you can be friends with. Like I say about my homie, Prodigy, I'd go into battle with him any day; I'll take him over anyone else. Now I mean, Prodigy is still workin' on his skills, but what counts for me is his heart, his dedication to the game, and his friendship."

Battles now take place all over California, in South Central, Watts and Compton, and is spreading rapidly in Arizona. Different styles of dance are evolving, such as buckin, which appears to be more disciplined and capoeira-like. In other states, clowning, which is more sexual, involving striptease movements and more ass-shaking, is more popular. Stripper dancing was the bridge movement between clowning and krumpin. The latter is also said to have less of a sense of community than clowning, but Trevon refutes this.

"THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE between clownin and krumpin, though, " he says. "Clowning is more fun and happy, and you don't have to put 100-per cent into it for it to look tight, to look great and spectacular.

On the other hand, krumpin takes a lot of emotional energy and takes more than 100-per cent to have it look good or what we call 'tight'.

"For your best move to come out you have to feel all of the energy from opponents and friends to do your best and be confident."

When Lachapelle released a colourful 24-minute documentary, Krumped, last year, some bewildered viewers suspected a highly elaborate hoax. He has since completed a full-length feature, Rize, which will be screened at this summer's Sundance festival. It will star krumpers from South Central, who have, through dancing, found another way of avoiding other less desirable default activities.

Lachapelle tended to meet dancers, who, on the whole, were anti-violence, anti-guns and who valued education.

"Originally I was shooting these clown groups that were having battles by night. I found out about an off-shoot which was a darker branch called krump cliques. Clowning is done to faster music and krump is slower with heavy bass. The movement was much more aggressive, " he said last year.

"It's so different from any type of hip-hop dancing that preceded it.

My jaw just dropped when I saw it, like when I saw breakdancing for the first time growing up as a kid in New York City. I got to film them when it was pretty unadulterated."

Even before the release of his film, krumpin has already seen light of day in mainstream popular culture.

Krumpin could be seen in Missy Elliott's I'm Really Hot video and the Lachapelle-directed video for Christina Aguilera's Dirrty, which he was making when he first came across the style.

For now, however, it remains Trevon Stanley's crazy, kinetic world. "This is what I spend most of my time doing, " he says. "I basically live it."