Theatre, Dance and Performance Training

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Tik Tok and generation Z

Laura Cervi

To cite this article: Laura Cervi (2021) Tik Tok and generation Z, Theatre, Dance and
Performance Training, 12:2, 198-204, DOI: 10.1080/19443927.2021.1915617

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2021.1915617

Published online: 24 Jul 2021.

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Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 2021
Vol. 12, No. 2, 198–204, https://doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2021.1915617

Essai

Tik Tok and generation Z

Laura Cervi

Introduction

Some months ago, during a rehearsal break, a teenage girl told me that
her ‘favourite dancer ever’ was Charli D’Amelio. Ignorant as to who
Charli DAmelio was, I started an investigation and soon discovered that
Charli is a sixteen-year- old American girl, who, with her 15-30 seconds
performances (most of them entirely choreographed and showed only
from the hips up), has attracted 80 million followers worldwide, becom-
ing the most followed person on Tik Tok.
Honestly, my first reaction was a mix of astonishment, outrage and
curiosity. However, when this same girl confessed to me that she had
started taking dance classes precisely so as to improve her Tik Tok per-
formances, I realized that it was the moment to overcome my instinctive
outrage and take Tik Tok seriously, studying it from a scientific perspec-
tive and with scholarly rigour.
As Anderson (2020) notices, in today’s swiftly moving social media app
landscape, it can be challenging to determine which apps will be around
by the time they have been written about. Tik Tok’s recent impressive
increase (mainly during the lockdown) and its current 800 million active
users seem to suggest that the app is here to stay; in any case, the plat-
form deserves attentive observation a priori, because it represents the
mirror of a generation, Generation Z. Since Generation Z will soon rep-
resent more than one-third of the world’s population, it is seminal to
understand, or at least get acquainted, with their habitat and with
their habits.

xxxxx© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 199

It is, thus, crucial for dance practitioners and teachers to understand

how this generation interacts with dance practices in order to foresee
the future of dance training.
For this reason, I have followed and interacted with Tik Tok #dance
communities for six months. This essay presents the preliminary results
of my ethnological observation, analysing both performances and users’
reactions, together with 50 in depth interviews with Tik Tok dancers.

Generation Z

Although there is no absolute consensus about the precise boundaries of

Generation Z, most literature (Pew Research Center 2019) considers
that it is composed of individuals born between the years 1996 and 2010.
Their most important characteristic is that they are the first generation
that has never known a world without the Internet. Their lives are
shaped by the internet, which has become a natural part of their lives.
The human brain responds and adapts to the environment: therefore,
as neurobiology research has proven (Rothman 2016), Generation Zers’
brains are structurally different to those of previous generations.
Surrounded by complex visual imagery, the part of their brain responsible
for visual ability is more developed, making them more reactive to visual
learning, but with a shortened attention span. In other words, this gener-
ation is the most exposed to boredom, or, to say it better, they get
bored more easily and in a shorter time.
According to the Pew Research Center (2019) findings, Generation
Zers watch on average 68 videos in a day, meaning that they have the
ability to sort through content faster than ever before, but indulge
in watching a video considerably less.

Tik Tok

Tik Tok seems to have perfectly understood what Generation Zers want.
Launched with the name of Douyin for the Chinese market in September
2016, presented as Tik Tok in most markets outside China in 2017 and
available worldwide after merging with Musically on 2 August 2018, the
app has been downloaded more than a billion times, becoming the most
downloaded non-gaming app in 2020, surpassing WhatsApp and Facebook
(ComScore 2020). Currently Tik Tok sums 800 million active users, 41
percent of them aged 16–24 (Omnicore, 2020), but its popularity is
increasing among kids as young as 10-12 even though, officially, they are
not allowed to have an account.
The platform allows users to create short videos of 3 to 15 seconds
and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds, using a wide selection of
music and a myriad of easy to use professional filters and editing services
(videos can be speeded up, slowed down, etc.).
Its connection to Musically might suggest that it is basically a lip-syncing
app, nonetheless, in Tik Tok everything is so random, divorced from
200 L. Cervi

context, ephemeral, that it is almost impossible to define what the plat-

form is about.
In navigating Tik Tok, a user can literally find any type of video: from a
tutorial on how to peel a mango or cast a love spell, to kids challenging
each other on playing the weirdest pranks; from random people singing
and dancing to celebrities endorsing #blacklivesmatter. This is due to the
platform’s use of large-scale artificial intelligence models.
Tik Tok employs artificial intelligence to analyse users’ interests and
preferences through their interactions with the content, based on the
videos they like, comment on, and also how long they watch the video to
display a personalized content feed for each user. In other words, instead
of being based on connections, on ‘people you know’, like the other
social networks, Tik Tok algorithm provides a personalized information
flow through the ‘For You’ page, a feed of videos that are recommended
to users based on their activity on the app, potentially providing everyone
with the same possibility to become viral.
The most frequent Tik Tok genres are Duets, Cringe and Challenges.
Duets are a core part of the Tik Tok experience: users can take another
person’s video and add themselves performing the same action, scene or
choreography. Cringe videos typically refer to someone acting awkwardly
or in an embarrassing fashion when trying to perform; Challenges are
often community-created trends, in which many Tik Tok users will make
videos attempting to do the same, however they can also take the form
of sponsored hashtags.

Tik Tok #dance

Music and actors’ interaction with it are the fundamental feature of Tik
Tok. Understanding that a choreographed dance is a series of movements
that are arranged into a piece, we can, without any doubt, assert that
dance is everywhere in Tik Tok.
Some videos are precisely about dancing, others might have another
goal, but some form of dancing is usually present. In particular, dance
often becomes the means to express users’ selves and to address political
or social issues. In #comingout videos, for example, Tik Tokers create
different choreographies (dancing/moving to the same song) to reveal
their sexual orientation for the first time to friends and relatives and
report their reaction.
Choreography and techniques of dance have always been influenced by
spatial and temporal limitations. If in ballet the shape of a stage instructs
choreographic patterns, and different stage elements (such as diagonals,
centers, fronts, placement of lights, etc.) have to be taken into account,
on Tik Tok all movement is influenced by the technological allowances
and the rationale for the performance.
First, creators need to stay in front of a mobile phone’s front-facing
camera and organize their performances within the limitation of a thirty-
second time frame; furthermore, since the ultimate rationale of the per-
formance is virality, movements have to be easy so that anyone with an
hour to spare can learn them through imitation. As a result, the
 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 201

choreography is less about innovative patterns and more about

comprehensiveness.
Analyzing the most viral Tik Tok dances such as Renegade, Cannibal,
Say So, Hit Every Beat, etc., in fact, it is easy to notice that they all fit
into the same aesthetic description: almost entirely choreographed from
the hips up, with the dancer staying in one place.
These technical allowances, specifically the position of the camera,
induce two interesting implications. On the one hand, feet, traditionally
fairly integral to the notion of dance, have completely disappeared; on
the other, face and facial expression, often neglected by postmodern neu-
trality, are central to the performance.

Implication for dance training

In brief, we could describe Tik Tok as a ‘place’ where millions of teenagers

engage in dance variations they can easily learn and perform directly from
their bedrooms. It is, therefore, no surprise that googling ‘Tik Tok dances
you can learn at home’ one gets 37,900,000 results in 0.72 seconds.
Does this mean that we are witnessing the end of dance, or at least
dance, as we know it today? Alternatively, and even more apocalyptically,
are we facing the end of formal dance training, as it is brutally murdered
by 15 second tutorials?
In order to answer these questions much more in-depth research is
needed. In this respect, my ethnological observation can be considered as
a first approximation on how Tik Tok might shape the future of
this field.
The results of both the observation and the in-depth interviews show
how the app is becoming a training ground for young amateur dancers
that individually train by imitating others, while fostering informal group
training (specifically groups of girls who get together to train and create
new Tik Tok choreographies).
In the words of Pilar, 15-year-old Tik Tok user and creator from
Spain: ‘With my friends we create a lot of Tik Tok choreography … it’s not
easy, we watch tutorials and rehearse until the coreo is ready to be shown’.
Similarly, Julia, 19-year-old American amateur dancer declares that it took
her a lot of time and rehearsal ‘to learn how to hit the woah’. To ‘hit the
woah’, in Tik Tok’s slang, describes when a dancer makes a quick, small
circular motion with his/her fists and leans into a freeze position when
the beat drops.
These examples hide very positive news for dance training: if in the
last centuries a well-mannered young girl needed to master ballroom dan-
ces in order to be accepted in society, Generation Zers seem to need
mastering the ‘Renegade ’ in order to have a decent social image. Luna,
21-year-old informal hip-hop teacher and Tik Tok creator based in
Chicago, clearly confirms this hypothesis: ‘my mom took a Waltz class for
her wedding … it’s the same … girls come to my page to learn how to hit the
woah … and I can make money out of it’.
Purists might say that this unorganized interest geared exclusively
towards the hedonistic side of performativity is not compatible with
202 L. Cervi

‘authentic’ dance values, and, in certain respects, they might be right;

nonetheless, this opportunistic interest can be fruitfully transformed into
an opportunity to bring Generation Zers closer to dance. In other words,
all these young people around the word attending a dance academy for
the unique purpose of learning to ‘hit the woah’, would - at least - dis-
cover that ‘hitting the woah’ is a dance move that belongs to a certain
dance tradition, acquiring a deeper awareness of their movements.
Moreover, and most importantly, some of them might develop a broader
interest towards dance as an artistic expression.
The app can also represent a window for formally trained dancers,
who adapt their skills to fit in, as well as an opportunity for informal
dance teachers to make their ways (and money) creating tutorials and
video lessons. Sally, 29-year-old professional dance teacher from Miami,
explains that she has been somehow forced into Tik Tok by her students
(girls aged 6 to12), discovering that, besides being an excellent tool to
connect with youth culture, ‘it is a great advertising tool’. Her viral videos
on Tik Tok proved to be an ideal instrument for advertising her studio
by practically demonstrating the benefits of taking dance lessons:
‘Sometimes I repeat a viral variation showing my followers how certain move-
ments can be dangerous to do without a proper dance training behind them,
and that brought me a lot of new students!’.
On the other hand, Bella, 24-year-old dancer and choreographer from
New York, has discovered that the app can be a source of choreographic
inspiration: ‘sometimes you run out of ideas, and these kids are an endless
source of inspiration’.
Likewise, Mina, 20-year-old ballet student from Milan, perceives Tik
Tok as a liberating tool: ‘Sometimes it’s great not to be so corseted. Being
exposed to so many different genres boosts my energy and my creativity’.
In conclusion, no social media will ever substitute a live session, or any
meaningful face-to-face connection, nonetheless, by considering Tik Tok a
ready-to-go dance platform, it can be used as a tool to foster creative
innovation, both in teaching practice and in students’ empowerment.
If it is true that, before the Covid-19 pandemic, most dance teachers
had barely heard of platforms like Zoom and now they rely on these
video services for their lessons, Tik Tok can become the source of a
renewed interaction between teachers and students, while expanding the
horizons of the choreographic process.

Future directions for research

As we have seen, Tik Tok dancers not only create choreographies, they
also direct, record and post-produce their performances. It is, therefore,
reasonable to assume that this app is enforcing a new performative
knowledge in young kids, made of the use of both their own bodies and
technologies, creating mash-up products, deconstructing and reconstruct-
ing musical content and dance styles, together with developing a high
level of audiovisual knowledge (narrative structure, production and
post-production).
 Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 203

Tik Tok creators, in other words, not only embody the ultimate level
of that ‘multitasking bricoleur’ contemporary dancer portrayed by Cvejic
and Vujanovic (2010, 4), but, by addressing social issues, they are also
generating a new type of performative activism, a sort of ‘playful activism’
in which a technology driven playful performative knowledge mixes and
combines with meaningful social activism.
This highlights the need to re-examine digital technology in relation to
its representation of the corporeal, meanwhile reflecting upon how
human bodies and technological apparatuses enter into a relation of
performativity.
As pointed out by Borgdorff (2012), it is, thus, essential to overcome
the ‘Faculties’ barriers and join forces into a cross pollination of disci-
plines. Performance and communication scholars, together with social sci-
entists, should cooperate in order to generate a new ontology of these
digital performative actions, without leaving computer scientists out, since
it is impossible to fully understand social media without taking into
account their structure, affordances and algorithmic architecture.
Last, but not least, when discussing Tik Tok we should not forget that
it is mostly ‘inhabited’ by minors. Consequently, the platform, if not used
in the proper way, can become a source of danger and a showcase of
wrong stereotypes (for example objectification of women’s bodies). For
example, as Melanie Kennedy (2020) points out, from a stylistic perspec-
tive Tik Tok is not exempt from cultural appropriation, since most of the
dance moves come from hip-hop, but are interpreted almost exclusively
by white dancers.
A new stream of multidisciplinary research and educational practice
should, therefore, be devoted to find the best way to include Dance
Literacy, or a more generic Movement Literacy within the broader field of
Media Literacy (Cervi, Paredes, and Tornero 2010). Dance scholars and
dance training practitioners, in particular, are crucial both for the theor-
etical understanding of the role and implications of movement in these
performances and for teaching young people how use their bodies in a
conscious and responsible way.

ORCID

Laura Cervi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0376-0609

References

Anderson, Katie Elson. 2020. “Getting Acquainted with Social Networks and Apps: It
is Time to Talk about Tik Tok.” Library Hi Tech News 37 (4): 7–12. doi:10.1108/
LHTN-01-2020-0001
Borgdorff, HendrikAnne. 2012. The Conflict of the Faculties: Perspectives on Artistic
Research and Academia. Leiden: Faculteit der Letteren, Leiden University Press.
Cervi, Laura, Oralia Paredes, and Jose Manuel Perez Tornero. 2010. “Current Trends
of Media Literacy in Europe: An Overview.” International Journal of Digital Literacy
and Digital Competence 1 (4): 1–9. doi:10.4018/jdldc.2010100101
204 L. Cervi

ComScore. 2020. “From quirky to mainstream: Tik Tok’s Time to Grow Up.” https://
www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/From-quirky-to-mainstream-TikToks-Time-to-
Grow-Up
Cvejic, Bojana, and Ana Vujanovic. 2010. “Exhausting Immaterial Labour in
Performance.” TkH Journal 17: 4–6. http://www.tkh-generator.net/wp-content/
uploads/2014/04/tkh-17eng-web.pdf
Kennedy, Melanie. 2020. “If the Rise of the Tik Tok Dance and e-Girl Aesthetic Has
Taught us Anything, It’s That Teenage Girls Rule the Internet Right Now: Tik
Tok Celebrity, Girls and the Coronavirus Crisis.” European Journal of Cultural
Studies 23 (6): 1069–1076. doi:10.1177/1367549420945341
Pew Research Center. 2019. “Defining generations: Where Millennials end and
Generation Z begins.” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-
millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/
Rothman, Darla A. 2016. “Tsunami of learners called Generation Z.” https://www.
mdle.net/Journal/A_Tsunami_of_Learners_Called_Generation_Z.pdf
Omnicore (2020). TikTok by the numbers: Stats, demographics & fun facts.
Omnicore, 12 February. Available at: https://www.omnicoreagency.com/tiktok-
statistics/ (accessed 22 September 2020).

Laura Cervi is Serra-Hunter Lecturer at the Department of Journalism and

Communication Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. PhD in Political
Science from the University of Pavia (Italy) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona
(Spain). Journalist and amateur dancer. Her main research interest is media literacy and
citizen participation.