The girl hustles into the ballet studio to the disapproving glare of the dance teacher, and takes her place at the barre. You can tell from the start that she doesn’t belong there among the stern, steely bunheads. Her eyes are too wide, her body too compact, her moves off-balance, as if she’s dancing to a different beat. Which, as it happens, she is, and when that beat kicks in — when the sounds of Girl Talk, that ADD-afflicted digital mixmaster, hit the soundtrack — she bursts out of the studio and onto the streets of New York, dancing all the way.
That’s the beginning of “Girl Walk//All Day,” an electric 71-minute long music video for the Girl Talk LP All Day. The film is the brainchild of Jacob Krupnick, a New York artist who found the money for the project through the online crowdfunding website Kickstarter. Krupnick put up a trailer for the Girl Walk//All Day — featuring the dancer, a young New Jersey native named Anne Marsen, boogeying on the staid Staten Island ferry — and soon enough the donations started flowing. It’s easy to see why. The film overflows with energy, as Marsen dances her way across New York, from the financial crowds of downtown to Central Park. She’s followed by other dancers, including Dai Omiya, an elegant tap dancer in a bowler hat, and John Lloyd, a bleached-blonde punk in a skeleton hoodie. They interact with other performers, including Luciano Acuna Jr. in a showstopping, backflipping parkour segment, and with ordinary New Yorkers, all the while keeping time to the hyperactive hip-hop mash-ups of Girl Talk.
This is hipster heaven, and the young and bearded crowd loved it at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple on December 8, where the film had its public premiere. (You can see the video online here.) But “Girl Walk//All Day” is more than just a clever idea because of Marsen, who embraces the dance — and New York City — with unrestrained and very unhip glee. By the time she has a lunchtime crowd of working women in the West Village backing her to Beyonce’s “Put a Ring on It,” you’ll be ready to hit the floor yourself.
[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/33165188]