She posted it for her then-95 million followers. To her surprise, by the following day, the video received 10,000 likes, and soon the dance was all around the TikTok platform, also tried by the app's most-followed user, a 16-year-old dancer, Charli D'Amelio. She showed the dance in her bathroom and posted it with a call to "try it and tag me." "Then I cleaned up the moves," she says, "because I was like, 'I don't want to make this too hard.' "Ĭannella, 22, had struck an excellent balance for TikTok dance virality though she was not aware of it yet: something rhythmically satisfying and eye-catching but still accessible, not beyond the real amateur dancers. Between famous moves like the Woah and the Wave, she mimed releasing a basketball into the air and dribbling it between her legs, reflecting sound themes (which samples the song "Basketball" 2002 Lil Bow Wow ). She began by improvising, as she often does while choreographing for TikTok. It was called HOOPLA, a 15-second clip by the user known as and it promptly made her wish to dance.
She was scrolling through TikTok one day this fall when she came across a sound that grabbed her attention. Here's a girl named Kara Leigh Cannella, who is a senior dance major at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia