Woodbridge Teens Win Nationals, Film Dance Video Around Town

WOODBRIDGE, NJ — Check out this new dance video produced by Across the Floor dance studio in downtown Woodbridge.

The video, filmed all over Woodbridge and featuring local Woodbridge teens, was produced hot off the heels of their first-place win at Groove dance competition this past July in Atlantic City. Across the Floor's hip-hop dance team competed against teams from across the country, and won first place in the National Grand Championship. It is the first time in Across the Floor's twenty-five year history that Woodbridge kids won nationals, said Gisell Valentin, the studio's hip-hop dance instructor who coached the winning team. That win spurred the studio to create a video of their first-place dance.

"We always wanted to do a video. A dance videographer, Tim Gordon of Gordon 5 Films, saw them perform the dance 'Mask Off,' and he said it would be perfect for a video," said Valentin, who herself grew up in Woodbridge and graduated from Woodbridge High. "He said, 'This is the one.'"

The video, "Mask Off," features local Woodbridge and Perth Amboy teenage boys and girls, ages 13 to 16, and shows them walking around familiar Woodbridge spots late at night — and then getting kidnapped. Valentin said she directed the video and came up with the concept entirely on her own.

"Their dance routine featured masks and the masks are already so scary, so I was like, 'Let's make it creepy and sort of Halloween-ish,'" she said. "I said, 'Let's start off with you guys walking to the train station, and it's dark.' We definitely wanted to stay in our hometown. We wanted to show people Woodbridge and have them come to Woodbridge and our studio."

She said some parents commented that the video is scary.

"Yes, I definitely have gotten that. The parents were like, 'This is so scary!,'" she said. "We were going for a 'Thriller' concept where Michael Jackson gets taken over by the zombies. So it was more about the masks taking over the girls, and then the girls becoming someone else halfway through the dance."

The video was only posted to YouTube five days ago, and it's already gotten more than 1,000 views.

"So it's kind of already gone viral a little bit, and we wanted to keep that going," said Valentin.