A small group of elite young dancers became fixtures in these videos. Gabe De Guzman, who was part of that crew, described it as a lightning-in-a-bottle moment. “Everything felt very, very fresh, because we were kids genuinely having fun,” De Guzman, now 25, said. “It wasn’t planned. It was our actual passion that just happened to get on video.”
In those earlier days of social media, earning a large following was often a happy surprise rather than a goal in itself. Kayla Mak, now 23 and an apprentice with American Ballet Theater (A.B.T.), became popular online after appearing on the television series “World of Dance” as a teenager. She said she was only dimly aware of her own virality.
“My dad would be like, ‘Oh, look, your solo is blowing up on YouTube,’” she said in a video interview. “And I’d be like, ‘Cool!’ And then go back to doing my homework and eating chicken nuggets.”
Still, having a large digital audience inevitably changed the way these young artists thought about their dance careers. Mak, who studied a variety of dance styles at Juilliard before coming to Ballet Theater — a very unusual route to the company — said her success on social media and television exposed her to different sides of the professional dance world.
“I have all of these facets that I can use to my advantage at A.B.T., because I got to see and do so much,” she said. “It’s like each thing was a baby step toward the artist I want to become.”
Social media culture, though, can also be flattening. Social apps allow young dancers more control over their images than big entertainment-world operations like Disney, but they are still, Krayenbuhl said, “a place where ultimately everything is for sale, everything is packaged.”
