TikTok

"Low pressure, low stakes, low toil: Professional dancers with time on their hands are learning the pleasures of TikTok challenges.

TikTok

PhD candidate Barry Brannum and Darrian O'Reilly MFA '17 spoke to NYT about sharing choreography on Tik Tok and other online platforms.

"At this time of year, the dancer Erica Lall, a member of the corps of American Ballet Theater, would normally be preparing for eight weeks of performances at the Metropolitan Opera House. But in mid-March, as the company moved toward calling off its spring season, she found herself back in her hometown Cypress, Tex., with some extra time on her hands.

It wasn’t long before Ms. Lall, far from her busy New York life, decided to open up TikTok, an app she had used before but hadn’t explored too deeply. “I was bored, and I was like, ‘All right! It’s time to try out one of these dances,’” she said by phone from Texas.

Ms. Lall, 22, was referring to the viral dance challenges that circulate on TikTok: short, music-driven sequences of choreography, created by individual users — or swiped from other video platforms — and replicated sometimes by millions of other people around the world."

Read the entire article at New York Times