Help us raise funds to pay the talented dancers by donating to our Kickstarter campaign today:

In Praise of Vacant Lots: “Let’s not forget the lowly commons all around that enliven and enrich our lives. Things like sidewalks, playgrounds, community gardens, murals, neighborhood hang-outs, and vacant lots. Especially vacant lots.” -Jay Walljasper

In Praise of Vacant LotsPhoto by Laura Gilmore

Photo: Laura Gilmore

Jessica Koslow, Miss Prissy, Lil' C, Manny Fernandez

“The 818 Session” had its premiere at the Dances With Films festival on Friday, June 1, at 2:45 pm at the Chinese 6 Theatres.

Photo by Dan Carino

“The 818 Session” has been chosen to participate in the 15th Annual Dances With Films and will screen June 1 at 2:45 p.m. at the Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood, Calif.

It will also screen on June 29 between 2-4 p.m.at LACMA as part of the Dance Camera West Dance Media Film Festival.

About The 818 Session: The 818 Session is a krump circle that gathers every Wednesday at midnight in a Ralphs Parking lot in North Hollywood. The 818 refers to the area code of North Hollywood. The founders of krump — Miss Prissy, Lil’ C and Mijo — show up regularly.

Here’s a trailer I made for the doc:

Photo by Francesco Belvedere

Not only is “The 818 Session” screening at Dances With Films and Dance Camera West in June, but Miss Prissy is working on a film titled “The Underground,” and Prissy and Lil’ C are creating an original live show to premiere at Bovard Auditorium at USC on Sept. 5, 2012.

This year marks the 10^th anniversary of krump, a street dance created by youth in South Los Angeles, which was the focus of Dave LaChapelle’s 2005 documentary Rize. Celebrating this milestone, choreographer and krump founder Miss Prissy, who has danced with Snoop Dogg, the Game and Madonna, is creating a live theater experience revolving around the art of krump, titled “The Underground: From the Streets to the Stage.” The show, which also features the choreography and talent of Lil’ C, another founder of krump and a guest judge on FOX’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” illustrates why it was and still is so necessary — emotionally, spiritually and physically — to the dancers who krump regularly in the streets, in studios and in spaces around the world.

By Leah Lamb

Venice, California-based Wemo Media is celebrating the launch of theBlu by honoring the ocean through a global love letter that will be featured on the Nasdaq screens in New York’s Times Square on May 4^th. People in NYC will get to engage in the streets and see their faces and fish swim across the big screens from 5-11pm EST.

People around the world can virtually participate by tweeting and Facebooking their love letters to the ocean (selected comments will be featured on the Nasdaq screens). (Watch the Launch Live in Times Square on May 4th: http://bit.ly/theBluNYC)

For example, I recently tweeted: Dearest ocean, I love it when I step into u sometimes u get all crazy and crash on top of me reminding me of who’s really in charge. #theblu

If you prefer to Facebook your love letter, and want it to be considered for being on the big screens in Times Square, be sure and post on theBlu’s Facebook page. For nature-loving freaks like myself it’s kind of thrilling to get to see the hyperactive screens of consumerism in Times Square get taken over by images of the deep sea, with featured love letters to the ocean streaming in from around the world.

Meanwhile, sad to say, outside of my fantasies of swimming with whales and diving off the coast of Kauai, the majority of my thoughts about the ocean tend to gravitate toward frightening topics such as mercury poisoning, oils spills, acidification, over fishing, too much plastic…and on and on. I think that’s why I got excited when I was introduced to theBlu.

Every time I return to my computer, and theBlu pops up, it reminds me of my passion and love of the ocean, and as Jacques Cousteau said, “We protect the things we love.”

Click here for full article on National Geographic

The current May 2012 issue of Juxtapoz Magazine. I am honored to be in this issue with other amazing artists from all over the world that focuses on global public art. Revok and I have a conversation on some of the challenges and triumphs that play themselves out in the current climate of uncertainty and political misfortunes created by corrupt officials here in my native city of Los Angeles.

The May 2012 issue of Juxtapoz is our special examination on the state of Public Art in 2012. We have spent over a year discussing the topic of community service and Public Art programs with festival organizers, politicians in the US and abroad, and artists about their experiences developing Public Art initiatives and bodies of work, and how their experiences can be blueprints for other artists and cities to follow to better communities around the world. This issue is what we learned.

Click here for Juxtapoz

Laura Flanders chats with Noam Chomsky

By Laura Flanders

Noam Chomsky has not just been watching the Occupy movement. A veteran of the civil rights, anti-war, and anti-intervention movements of the 1960s through the 1980s, he’s given lectures at Occupy Boston and talked with occupiers across the US.  A new publication from the Occupied Media Pamphlet Series brings together several of those lectures, a speech on “occupying foreign policy” and a brief tribute to his friend and co-agitator Howard Zinn. From his speeches, and in this conversation, it’s clear that the emeritus MIT professor and author is as impressed by the spontaneous, cooperative communities some Occupy encampments created, as he is by the movement’s political impact. We are a nation whose leaders are pursuing policies that amount to “suicide” Chomsky says. But there are glimmers of possibility – in worker co-operatives, and other spaces where people get a taste of a different way of living. We talked in his office, for Free Speech TV on April 24.

Click here for GRITtv with Laura Flanders

Photo by Dan Carino

We have a date for our screening! “The 818 Session,” the mini-doc I made with my classmate Tee Letsaolo, will be screened on June 29 at LACMA between 2-4 p.m. as part of the Dance Camera West Dance Media Film Festival! This festival is free.

About The 818 Session: The 818 Session is a krump circle that gathers every Wednesday at midnight in a Ralphs Parking lot in North Hollywood. The 818 refers to the area code of North Hollywood. The founders of krump — Miss Prissy, Lil’ C and Mijo — show up regularly.

Here’s a trailer I made for the doc:

From Gangsta Rap to Bwy Theater: Cultural Touchstones of the LA Riots, (L-R) Warren Olney, Gary Phillips, Anna Deavere Smith and John Singleton

Host: Warren Olney

Produced by: Anna Scott

On today’s anniversary edition of Which Way, LA?, we look at music, movies and literature that reflected – and in some cases predicted – the 1992 Los Angeles riots. We hear from filmmaker John Singleton, writer and actress Anna Deavere Smith, musicians Ozomatli and others about the cultural touchstones of riots-era Los Angeles. (For additional KCRW coverage of the 1992 riots, go to http://KCRW.com/LARiots.)

Click here for KCRW podcast, pictures and comments