FOOT WORK Part ballet, part hip hop, even on stage Memphis Jookin remains all street. Photo Credit: Louis “Ziggy” Tucker

Jookin can be as difficult as the most intricate ballet, where calves are burning and toes are cracking, or it can look as effortless as a crashing wave. It can be just a few people dancing in a park, or it can sell out a concert hall.

Charles Riley began jookin when he was just 12 years old, after moving to Memphis from his childhood home in Chicago. Soon after he began dancing, he took on the name Lil Buck.

“It was a special thing that was happening in Memphis musically,” he says. “And that’s what helped us first bounce. It made us bounce a certain way, and then it made us get buck. It made us get buck and crunk.”

Buck is a direct product of underground rap music from the late 1980s, all of the ’90s and some of the early 2000s that came from the urban and violent streets of Memphis. When his sister brought some moves home and showed them off, Buck was hooked. At the time, she was a senior in high school and he was just a freshman.

“When I was younger, I think I used to move too fast,” Buck says. “I just tried to do everything too fast. My waves were too fast, everything was just too fast because I was so excited.”

Soon, his mother took him out of public school and enrolled him in a private performing arts school, the former Yo! Academy in Memphis. There Buck says he was able to merge his street style of dance with a different skill set. He took up ballet and stuck classical dance right next to the gangsta walk.

“It’s just as much training in the street dancing world that we need as the classical world,” Buck says. “I just want people to see how artful it is in this raw form.”

Memphis has birthed some of the country’s most prominent musicians and artists, like Aretha Franklin and Maurice White, as well as some of rap’s newest superstars, like Moneybagg Yo and Pooh Shiesty. But Memphis is also one of America’s most deadly cities, where gun violence and drugs have tainted the city’s history with blood.

Dancing to this music, people jerk and twist in quick, smooth motions that contort the dancer’s arms, legs, neck, head and torso into a form of explosive art. Think heavy-bass, synthesizers, fast hi-hats and cracking snares.

“This is the natural sound that the style of jookin was birthed from,” Buck says. “A lot of people didn’t like it because of the lyrics and what was being talked about in these songs, but that was just the times growing up in Memphis. … They’re not from that environment, and they don’t know about the struggles and traumas.”

The dance started with the legendary sounds of these artists and that of the illustrious Memphis all-star team Three 6 Mafia, a platinum-selling group who rapped about what it’s like growing up in a mostly-Black city in America’s landlocked South. Three 6 Mafia music is all about making money, dodging bullets and staying fly. In short: it’s about life in Memphis from 1991 to now.

Buck heard DJs like Spanish Fly, Squeaky, Zerk and others in clubs around Memphis playing their own mixes. From there, he started his dancing career moving to the sounds he knew from Memphis.

“My experience is so different because I grew up in the streets, so I understand it. The hood. I understand it. And I understand the approach and beauty of it,” Buck says. “I wanted to be the best mover growing up, not just a street dancer.”

Now at 33 years old, Buck has worked with world-famous superstars such as Michael Jackson, Madonna and Yo-Yo Ma, and been the face of high-dollar ad campaigns for Nike, Jordan, Apple and Lexus. He’s also one of the main choreographers for the new Starz series Blindspotting.

“It might definitely be a culture shock for some people but we’re going to have a lot of fun,” Buck says. “I just want people to come out to the show. Come out and get some culture about you, learn something. It’s going to be one of your most fun learning experiences.”

Lil Buck
Mon, 7:30pm, $32+
Bing Concert Hall, Stanford