The Creation of "The Anthem" + IMP-Style.

The first IMP-Style video, to Pitbull's "The Anthem."

IMP has been creating play videos for the last 10 months, mixing dance, parkour, and some stunt work in there. And I've been playing with parkour for the last couple years, acting out my Jackie Chan fantasies around downtown L.A.

I was inspired by the following video, rough hewn as it is. It has within it the seed for what I've started calling IMP-Style, meaning dance that mixes hip-hop (and other dance styles) with parkour and environmental exploration. Big props to the guy for his bravery for doing what he has to do, with little concern for passers-by.

What finally occurred to me with "The Anthem" is what now seems obvious: a video that is more or less straightforward dance, but within urban rugged environments, and using whatever three-dimensional structures are available. It's parkour mixed with hip hop mixed with Contact Improv mixed with whatever.

As soon as I saw the video that inspired me (on the last blog), I grabbed my camera, jumped on Z (my motorcycle), and headed out to downtown. No plan, no idea of what I was going to run into. Indeed, this would be my first time really allowing myself to dance full-on, while outdoors in public.

Downtown L.A. has many amazing places to play, but the area near the railroad tracks / L.A. River has the richest collection of features, the least amount of people, and much of the best graffiti in town. I found a parking lot that was unsecured to start, and focused more on "top-rocking" (i.e. normal, upright, bipedal dance), to get me started. But right across the street from the lot was the 621 railing, which I had previously explored in a now-defunct Stick's Riffs video.

As with the previous and following set-ups, however, I planned nothing, did it all improv, and in only one take.

The real coup, however, was finding the abandoned building that takes up about half of the video. I had cruised by it earlier on Z, lucky glance, just saw the interior through a slat in the wood. But I saw some guy hanging out in front of it, and thought I'd come by later. When I did, he was no longer around, so I slipped in and shot until dark. I didn't head out to downtown until nearly 4pm, so there was little light left, and during the last shot (as you can see), I lost all my remaining light. As I was preparing Z to leave, the guy came back, and his reaction suggested that he lived there. A good time to roll. Of course, I'm dedicated to not destroying or defacing any of the places I play in, so no harm done.

It was scary, too, to see my own dance on-screen. We'd been shooting for 10 months, by now, so I was used to seeing myself play, but I had never shot myself dancing hip-hop, so it was a total mystery. I only knew how it feels. The greatest insight from watching the footage was not "change this or that". It was to remember to trust the flow. It was painfully clear when I tried to make something happen, rather than just allow the dance to move me. Most of that footage, of course, didn't end up in the final (some of the floor work is a bit forced). But more than anything, it was the reminder to trust, to allow myself to dance full-on, without reservation, and just have a good time with it. Sounds like a good prescription for life, too.