Religious Significance

• Many African tribal dances are performed to celebrate and conjure spirits. The movements required to krump -- including chest pumps, arm jabs, buck hops and arm swings -- resemble African dance moves mimicked during the rites of Santeria, a Nigerian Yoruba religious derivative. In Santeria, the bata dance's rigorous movements to summon the spirit Chango look much like krump movements. In addition, the word "krump" often is represented as an acronym for Kingdom Radically Uplifted for Mighty Praise -- indicating that krump dances are performed in worship of a higher power.
  
  

Aggressive Gesturing

• Krump dancers' movements become aggressive. Dancers feverishly pop the chest, make sudden jerks with their arms and stomp the ground similar to a Pentecostal overcome with the Holy Spirit. The harsh movements look like the person is trying to release negativity from the body and fight without weapons. One tribe, South Africa's Zulu Nation, has members who stomp their feet and flail their arms while dancing the traditional Indlamu. Rapid movements of the abdomen are part of South Africa's Xhosa Umteyo dance. To add to the warrior appearance, krumpers often paint their faces like African tribal dancers.
  
  

Competitions

• Krump dancers form crews -- like break dancers did in the 1980s -- that engage in dance competitions with each other. Dancers often lunge at each other and onlookers during these competitions and perform confrontational gestures that mimic fighting. African dances that require dancers to separate into groups to re-enact war engagements include the atsiagbekor dance of Southern Ghana, Togo and Benin, the fontomfrom dance of Ghana and the wrestling soli dance of Guinea. All of these dances celebrate skill, victory and death.
  
  

Choreography

• Although frenetic, the movements of krump are refined in that they evoke a message that coincides with the music's rhythm and the dancer's emotion. Uncanny similarities to African dance tradition include quickly rotating the waist, hips and arms, moving the upper body in a way that mimics rippling and emphasizing the feet as with stomping or the chest as with pop-locking. The bamaaya and takai dances of Ghana, specifically, use a lot of torso twisting, pivot turns and stomps during routines. In addition, dance formations are not uniform. They may involve one person stealing the show, two people squaring off or engaging with each other or a group of dancers taking turns.