'Stomp the Yard': The Story's in the Stepping

The dancing in "Stomp the Yard" shows remarkable grace and power. (By Alfeo Dixon -- Screen Gems Via Associated Press)

"Stomp the Yard" has one great thing about it. That thing, its best thing, its only thing, its cool thing, is its sense of rhythmic percussion. If you ever saw the novelty musical "Stomp" or have heard Alan Lomax's collection of Parchman Farm chain gang songs from the '40s, you'll get down with it. Its script must have read: Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM!

It's really two movies. The first and most forgettable is the much-told old story about a young man finding himself and becoming somebody. The young man is an L.A. street dancer named DJ, well played by charisma merchant Columbus Short. When, at an underground dance contest heavy on intimidation and aggression, he and his brother trump some gang-related dancers, trouble breaks out, the brother (Chris Brown) is killed, and DJ is arrested. It's juvey or, through connections, off to college. How big a no-brainer is that?

At college -- Truth University, in the film a historically black institution in Atlanta -- his talents get him noticed even as he's noticing a beautiful young woman, April (Meagan Good, whom you will go home and dream about after seeing this film, just my prediction). He finally decides to commit to a team sport and, as an athlete, finds the respect, the brotherhood, the emotional completion that has been denied him by circumstance and pathology. He leads the team to the nationals.

Ho-hum.

But the sport isn't basketball or football or anything like that: It's stepping.

And that's the second movie in "Stomp the Yard." If you've never seen stepping, it's quite a show, and the film throws well-deserved light on this somewhat under-the-radar phenomenon, at least outside African American fraternities.

"Stepping" will also be familiar to anyone who served in the old Army, before KP was outsourced to minimum-wage contract workers. In that army, it was called "close order drill," and the military function of it is the same as the fraternity's function: to take a bunch of uninterested young men and turn them into a cohesive unit quickly, in complete rhythm, achieving precision, beauty and success. There is no I in close-order drill -- or in stepping. (It helped -- this was my downfall in the Army -- if you knew your left foot from your right.)

At any rate, with his natural choreographic skills, DJ is a superb stepper and quickly becomes a leader in frat house culture.

Short is a professional choreographer and his dancing seems unstuck in time. How he can break his movements down to such small elements, keep them so precise and in such rigorous rhythm, yet remain on track and moving forward with Nureyev's beauty and discipline is something to see.

And the stepping on-screen, though possibly inflated by movie magic to Vegas-style proportions (the final step-off at the "nationals" could go onstage at Caesars Palace!) is nevertheless equally riveting. It's charismatic movement, like samurai sword fighting, or deep pass catching; you marvel that anyone could get so much grace and power out of his body.

Stomp the Yard (100 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for adult themes, violence, some sexual material and profanity.