SUNDAY STORY:KRUMPIN’ KIDS

Lyneal Miller has seen the police lights before.

He’s been yelled at through the helicopter speaker, shooed away from businesses, and glared at by people who took him for a gangbanger or a troublemaker.

It’s no surprise to him. Lyneal is a Krump dancer, a master of one of Southern California’s most volatile art forms, and from a distance, the moves can look like real-life aggression.

However, Lyneal, the oldest of four brothers living in a tight bungalow in Costa Mesa, has some other words to describe his craft:

Family.

God.

And first and foremost, peace.

“A lot of people think it’s fighting at first glance,” said Lyneal, 19, who works during the week for T-Mobile. “Some people won’t even call it dance, but with the intricacy of the movement, it keeps their attention.”

For the last several years, Lyneal and his three younger brothers ? Keith, Adahn and Myles Woodard ? have honed their skill at Krump dancing, a form that arose in Los Angeles following the 1992 riots. To an unsuspecting bystander, the dance may appear terrifying. Participants thrash their limbs, gyrate their torsos and flash menacing facial expressions at each other, usually set to a pounding hip-hop beat.

But as Lyneal and other practitioners of Krump quickly note, the purpose of the dance is to channel the energy that might lead to genuine violence. To some, it even has a religious meaning ? according to Keith, the word “Krump” stands for “Kingdom Radical Uplifting Mighty Praise.” And for all its moves, the dance imposes a certain amount of discipline. When Adahn, 13, wanted to join a local Krump outfit to which Lyneal belongs, his oldest brother made him bring his grades up first.

“We’ve been wanting to make dance a career, and there are certain standards that go to having a career in dance,” said Keith, 15, a sophomore at Costa Mesa High School. “You have to have a work ethic, and you have to have passion for it, basically.”

This fall, Keith and his brothers are looking to spread that passion. The foursome, who moved to Costa Mesa last year, plan to teach Krump dancing to Westside students at the Save Our Youth center.

A night of revelation

A spacious house in Alta Dena. A loft in Pasadena. An apartment in Alta Loma, then another one across town.

Costa Mesa’s Krumpers traveled a long and rocky path to their duplex near Orange Coast College, on a scruffy block in the shadow of a neighboring church. Their father, music producer Keith Andes, moved the family to whatever residence he could afford as his career surged and ebbed.

Even though the family’s fortunes varied, the children got a taste of show business at an early age. Andes, who has produced Babyface and other artists, brought his sons to the recording studio to watch him work. Keith scored a part in the cast of “The Lion King” during the sixth grade, performing at the Pantages Theatre and later moving to Broadway and the national tour. While in high school, Lyneal joined Stand Up, a touring troupe that visited different campuses to talk about diversity.

In 2004, Keith tried out and won a scholarship to the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, a Culver City studio taught by the famed dancer and television host. One night, with his three brothers in attendance, he watched a Krump demonstration by two young dancers, Tight Eyez and Lil’C, who had recently been featured in a hip-hop documentary titled “Rize.”

For Keith and his siblings, it was a revelation.

Over the next two years, he and Lyneal began entering Krump contests around Southern California, sometimes taking home prize money. At one point, through an industry contact of their father, they danced behind rapper Kanary Diamonds at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

A constant supporter was the boys’ mother, Tynyetta Dynear, who drove her sons to events even as their residence kept changing.

“It did wonders for their character to know they could do this themselves,” she said. “There hasn’t been much adult input. I’ve just been their chauffeur.”

A woman with a quick smile and a strict set of values, Dynear boasts of the fact that her children work hard and avoid smoking and drinking. Even while she eggs them on at competitions, she also imposes tight rules. Recently, when the boys came in 25 minutes past curfew, she grounded them for two weeks ? even Lyneal, despite the fact that he’s older than 18.

Those slips notwithstanding, Dynear considers her sons to be future leaders. And she bristles at any concern that Krump is an influence on youth violence.

“It’s completely positive,” she said. “More parents should be in support of what they do.”

Touching base at SOY

When the brothers moved to Costa Mesa in May 2005, they were already seasoned Krump dancers. To condition themselves, they ran up and down the block at night. Soon after discovering a Kmart parking lot near their house, they brought their boom box down and started dancing.

Before long, they started to draw a crowd. First local kids gathered around, and then the police stopped by. The latter had been a common sight in the past, but the officers grew accustomed to it before long. For a while, the boys tried dancing at South Coast Plaza as well, but stopped when the events began attracting drag racers.

In the meantime, Adahn and Keith began hanging out at Save Our Youth, a center that opened in 1993 to keep kids out of gangs. There, they met executive director Trevor Murphy, who was looking for dance instructors in this year’s summer program.

On June 2, at Murphy’s invitation, the brothers performed at the annual Save Our Youth banquet at Rea Elementary School. With the lights dimmed and a boom box blaring, the group shook and convulsed across the stage, eliciting louder and louder applause from the student crowd.

Murphy, who has never had formalized dance classes at the center before, offered them a chance to work as volunteer instructors. Right now, the brothers are slated to begin a workshop in the fall, teaching their moves after school to anyone willing to sign up. Ultimately, Murphy said, he would like the group to teach a variety of dance styles, but he knew that Krump would catch on easily with his clientele.

“I like the spontaneity of it,” Murphy said. “It’s very creative in the sense that if you look at two routines, they can be completely different. It’s definitely a form of art.”

Joining with a family

The Krump dancing world, like the Save Our Youth center, is meant to keep at-risk kids out of trouble. However, there’s another similarity between the two, and it’s one shared by nearly every youth gang in the world: a sense of family.

A few months ago, Lyneal and Keith both joined a Krump dancing troupe called D-Fam, consisting of nearly two dozen young men who travel around to local competitions. The troupe’s official home base: the Stadium Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Anaheim. Its main backer is the pastor of the church, Ruckins McKinley, whose son is the leader of D-Fam.

And while the dancers bond like brothers, they appeal to a father of a higher sort. Most of the time, a Krump session is hard and fast, built around heavy beats and intimidating looks. Sometimes, though, the situation calls for a different style. On those nights, with painted glass overhead and churchgoers filling the audience, the dance can mellow.

“We pray before we actually dance or practice,” Keith said. “When we practice at church or if we go to an event at church, there’s no cussing, no vulgar language at all. We just try to keep everything positive.”