Video Event Blurs Boundary Between Concert, Film and Dance Party

A scene from 'Girl Walk'

(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – The long-form dance music video Girl Walk // All Day kicks off a dance party on Saturday, August 4, 2012, at 9 p.m. at MASS MoCA. Directed by Jacob Krupnick, Girl Walk // All Day is set to Greg Gillis’s (a.k.a. Girl Talk) album All Day, in which three dancers move across New York City, turning its sidewalks, parks, and architecture into an evolving urban stage.

The film essentially uses nothing but All Day as its narrative, foregoing dialog aside from a subtitled encounter between the movie’s star (Anne Marsen) and a Hasidic man who asks her why she’s dancing. Krupnick explains, “I knew I needed a piece of music that had an emotional arc to it, that had a story unto itself. At first listen, the album seemed like a godsend.” At virtually every screening, viewers dance in front of the screen – not unlike fans at the average Girl Talk concert. Krupnick notes, “Most of our screenings have been without chairs.”

Wired Magazine calls Girl Walk // All Day “a film for everyone who caught themselves dancing in public to the music in their headphones and just didn’t care” and continues, “It’s also a piece of visual art painted with the colors of New York City, where the residents don’t even blink when a goofy girl in a windbreaker starts dancing like a crazy person right through a park in broad daylight.”

The film took about 50 days to shoot and, according to Wired, aside from the moment when Marsen was kicked out of Yankee Stadium for dancing along a barrier between the crowd and the field, the filming went smoothly (her ouster made the final cut). Originally the script called for passersby to react to the crazy antics of the film’s trio of dancers but, as Krupnick found out, it takes more than a guy in a skeleton sweatsuit chasing a girl through the streets to get a rise out of unflappable New Yorkers. “In the script there were cases where I wrote in brackets [Commuter Stares] – it’s like taking that classic ‘Applause’ light that used to be in television studios and applying it to real life,” Krupnick said. “[During filming] there was very rarely the reaction that I had imagined.”

Girl Walk // All Day will be shown at MASS MoCA on Saturday, August 4, at 9 PM in MASS MoCA’s Courtyard C Café, or in Hunter Center if it rains. Tickets for the show are $15 in advance and $19 day of show. MASS MoCA members receive a 10% discount. Tickets are available through the MASS MoCA Box Office located off Marshall Street in North Adams, open from from 10 AM to 6 PM (every day). Tickets can also be charged via phone by calling 413.662.2111 during Box Office hours, or purchased online at www.massmoca.org.

MASS MoCA, the largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts in the United States, is located off Marshall Street in North Adams on a 13-acre campus of renovated 19th-century factory buildings.  MASS MoCA is an independent 501(c)(3) whose operations and programming are funded through admissions and commercial lease revenue, corporate and foundation grants, and individual philanthropy.  Except for an initial construction grant from the Commonwealth, and competitive program and operations grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MASS MoCA is privately funded: 90% of annual operating revenues are from earned revenues, membership support, and private gifts and grants.

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.