Cool Aid and Romela Wimms during their performance. (Aaron Hagstrom / Neon Tommy)

As Cool Aid the clown’s truck rolled through the open iron gates of Duke Ellington High School, 3500-Watt speakers blared “Only got $20 in my pocket.” He and three dancers jumped out onto the basketball court and beckoned to 40 high school students watching from the sidelines.
 
“I’m here to start a dance program,” Stanley Alexander shouted through a megaphone, as students cheered, ““We gonna show you how to get up out this place [the neighborhood].”
 
Some interventionists rely on tried-and-true methods for gang and youth intervention work, but Stanley Alexander is different. He dresses as a clown and uses a dance called krumping to motivate at-risk youth to succeed. He has performed at middle schools and high schools in Inglewood and South Los Angeles.
 
Krumping is an aggressive street dance of jabs, stomps, chest pops and arm waves. The dance originated in the 90s among black gang communities in South Los Angeles to express frustration at the harsh conditions in which they lived. Alexander sees it as positive way to release pent-up emotions.
 
He encourages youth to set high goals for themselves — whether at a trade school, in the military, or in college. He caters to those who have not been successful in high school — those who are either failing or taking remedial courses. Alexander said his program can help students not only stay physically fit but also prepare for jobs. He gives more serious students the opportunity to travel with him and perform in summer stage shows.
 
Wearing a bright green wig and a shirt airbrushed with his portrait, Cool Aid tried to convince the students to dance with him. They slowly caught on. They trickled onto the basketball court to join in.
 
 Romela Wimms, a senior transfer from Washington, was one of the first to dance.
 
“I was excited to see him,” Wimms said.
 
Wimms sees dance as an outlet for anger. When he is being pressured into a gang situation, he expresses his frustration through dance, he said. It is a way to ignore the drugs and violence around him.
 
“Some kids try to start stuff after school, and sometimes I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Wimms said. “I krump to release all that anger.”
 
Cecil McLinn, Duke’s principal, said kids are targets even walking to and from school because of the active gang recruiting in the surrounding Athens neighborhoods. Gangs offer students, especially young men, respect and power, McLinn said. Selling drugs, students sometimes make $400-500 per night, which outdoes wages from salaried jobs.
 
“A gang member might say, ‘Here’s crack. Here are some joints,’” McLinn said. “’Get rid of them and bring my money back.’”
 
Gang activity has killed 23 students since he started 13 years ago, McLinn said. Last week one student was killed near the school for refusing to sell drugs.
 
McLinn hopes Alexander’s program helps boys avoid these situations. His school, like 53 other continuation high schools in California, is for at-risk high school students not on track to graduate. Such schools are smaller, more focused, but they offer only four hours of instruction per day. This means school ends long before public schools, which is more time for getting into trouble, McLinn said. So, afterschool programs are integral to staying out of trouble.
 
“Teenage boys need to blow off steam,” McLinn told Alexander. “Some are broken down and have bad grades.”
 
For several years, Duke had a boxing program with Washington High School, which is nearby. An auto shop next door was transformed into a boxing gym. It was successful until the new Washington principal stopped the program, concerned about safety and liability issues, McLinn said.
 
Due to limited funding, McLinn relies on nonprofits for afterschool programs. He has had several nonprofits give aid, including No Guns — an anti-gang organization for keeping Latinos out of gangs — and Heart of Los Angeles, an art program for at-risk youth. But these only stay for brief periods of a couple weeks, he said, and some proved to be scams.

Chris Boyd, a 23-year-old dancer for Alexander whose stage name is “blueberry blast,” joined the program while a junior at Fremont High School. He saw dancing as a way to release the frustration of living in a gang neighborhood and attending overpopulated, violent schools. Sometimes, gangs harassed him. One day, when he was walking home from basketball practice, a gang member robbed him of his phone and five dollars in cash. He quit high school a few days later, he said.
 
“I am glad Cool Aid sucked me in instead of the street,” Boyd said. In dancing, he could release the frustration of growing up in a hostile neighborhood without the guidance of a father.  
 
Boyd liked how Alexander accomplished goals. He said it motivated him to work hard as a dancer. Boyd performs at birthday parties and schools with Alexander. In 2009, he performed on America’s Got Talent, Chicago. In addition, he does two stage shows per year. Boyd said he wishes to pursue a career in security.  
 
“He did everything he said he was going to do,” Boyd said. “He is a go-getter.”
 
Alexander was impressed with Boyd’s overall change from rebel to dancer. When Boyd first started dancing for him, he said, he had an attitude and didn’t readily heed instruction.
 
“Chris was off the chain when he first came here,” Alexander said. “I did my best to get rid of him. But he’s cool now.”
 
Alexander has three other dancers in his troupe who range in age from eight to 16.
 
Alexander mock grappled with Boyd in a “krump battle,” as students watched, lining the edges of the basketball court. The opponents looked like boxers as they circled and pretended to hit or kick each other. Then Boyd somersaulted backward, as though kicked in the gut. After the demonstration, Alexander divided students up into teams and encouraged them to battle each other.
 
Alexander grew up in Inglewood, where he attended Morningside High School, played the trumpet and coronet in the marching band and was known as a class clown.
 
He first started dancing while working as a car mechanic at Goodyear Automotive. One day, a manager from the Speakeasy lounge in Pasadena told him he had a “nice body” after she saw him working on a car. She asked him to come for an interview. For the next several years, Alexander worked there as an exotic dancer.
 
In 1997, Alexander began driving trucks. For the next 10 years, he drove for the Apperson Print Management Company. During this time, he clowned on the side, inspired by Thomas “Tommy the Clown” Johnson, who first combined krumping and clowning.
 
Alexander started his routine as Cool Aid the clown in 2000. When an 8-year-old boy who grew up in a gang neighborhood in Compton was killed in a hit-and-run while crossing the street, Alexander decided to devote himself to at-risk youth — a way to honor th kid's death.
 
Alexander also began work for the People for Community Improvement, a non-profit community center in Athens, where he began providing entertainment for events such as the annual Walk for Life, a demonstration to make neighborhoods safer in South Los Angeles. At the end of the event, Alexander performs a krump-and-clown routine at Helen Keller Park.
 
Leon Bryant, 35, an outreach supervisor for the community center, said Alexander was such a big hit with the children that he was given a position there.  
 
Sometimes, Alexander’s job is dangerous. While performing at a party in a Compton neighborhood, he said, gang members threatened him and his clowns, saying they “weren’t wearing the right colors.” The clowns finally had to be escorted out by the sheriff’s department.
 
That’s “one street in Compton I never go to anymore,” Alexander said laughing. “Once they’re tripping, they can start some stuff.”
 
Other times, Alexander said, he will see gang members who are enthusiastic about learning to Krump.
 
“They are so hard,” Alexander said. “But when they see me perform, they turn into little kids again.”
 
Just this year, Alexander established Cool Aid the Clown Foundation, which serves people and schools all over South Los Angeles as well as in Inglewood and Compton.
 
Mike Wilson, a junior and former wide receiver at Washington High School, said he is excited about Alexander’s program. It is a way to live positively, he said.

“If you put your problems into the dance,” Wilson said. “You don’t do the negative stuff, like fighting and killing,”

Despite the enthusiastic response at Duke Ellington, Alexander said receptions are not always as cordial. But, he said, he cannot help everyone.

“I’m not a savior.” Alexander said, “I can’t save them all, but if I just save one, that will be enough.”
 

Reach reporter Aaron Hagstrom here.