From Ballerina to the Queen of Krump: The Party’s Just Begun for Marquisa Gardner
If you take a krumping class at the Debbie Reynolds Studio in North Hollywood, Calif., you won’t see Marquisa Gardner’s name listed among the instructors. Instead, you will find the name of a woman that Gardner refers to as the Superman to her Clark Kent, “Miss Prissy,” known also as The Queen of Krump.
Gardner, 27, first stepped into the spotlight after the release of “Rize,” David LaChapelle's 2005 film documenting the evolution of the dance style called “krumping.” The dance has roots that extend from South Central Los Angeles to sub-Saharan Africa, and it is marked by its improvisational movements that are governed as much by the dancer's inertia as emotion.
Despite cornering the market for female krumping, Gardner admits that she was an unlikely candidate for the title of “Queen” of the genre.
“I thought I was going to be a prima donna,” Gardner says. Trained in ballet from the ages of three to 16, she followed her classical training with tap, jazz, modern dance and hip-hop work. Raised by musician and singer parents, Gardner was encouraged to pursue her interests in the arts, both inside and outside of the dance world. While she was in college, she taught classes at a nearby junior high school, where her students introduced her to a style of dancing called krumping that was emerging in Los Angeles. Gardner began to take classes learning from local krumpers, and in doing so, she took the first steps in becoming one of the genre's iconic figures.
In the three years since the release of “Rize,” Gardner’s career has evolved to include producing the dance-heavy theatre piece, “Buckworld One,” out of the University of California–Riverside. She has danced with headliners like Madonna and Snoop Dogg, only to decline subsequent offers in order to pursue her solo music and film career— all while continuing to teach dance to anyone willing to check their classical training at the door to her studio.
You have to strip yourself of what you know, and that was very hard because the ballerina in me wanted to be graceful, Gardner says of her early attempts at krumping. “I had to learn that grace is not always about lines and beauty.” Gardener says that krumping is often not traditionally beautiful. For many krumpers, being a part of a dance crew is a way to avoid affiliation with gangs and street violence. Imbued with both rage and joy, by flailing arms and stomping feet, the form is noteworthy for the complexity of its rawness as well as its recent appearance in music videos.
The balancing act, Gardner says, is figuring out how to teach a style of dance that is marred by instruction and practiced movements. Unlike ballet, where each motion has a name and form, krumping is about spontaneity and feeling. There is no word for how Miss Prissy throws her arm up in the sky – it's the way that she throws her up that matters. Perhaps the greatest teaching attribute that Gardner has is the ability to push her students to access their most deeply buried emotions and memories.
Gardner laughs, “I'm very personal with my students, very personal. I get in their faces. Krump is angry, so I piss them off to get them to that place. Some students will even leave the class crying, and I'll ask, 'Why are you crying?' and they'll say, 'You made me think of things I never thought I could put into my dance.’ ”
In a modern marriage of lyrical dancing meets primal scream therapy, Gardner asks her students to confront their anger and use it artistically. She requires the dancers to adjust their connotations of anger – to not label anger as bad simply because it is not positive.
“It's my personal business to show how it's good,” Gardner says. “Not everything you see is violence. It's art.”