Professional dancers use social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube to market themselves. They build their brand, highlight their personalities, share dance content and show off their professional abilities (Basset). The attention from followers on social media gives them more exposure. The more popular a dancer is, the more likely they are to score job opportunities from internet fame. The use of social media as a marketing strategy is a concept that businesses have perfected and dancers are doing the same. Instagram is place for dancers to not only show their skills and post behind the scenes content of their projects, but also post their everyday lives and thoughts to become more personable. Before social media, commercial dancers booked jobs via agencies, word of mouth, and auditions. Today, dancers can book jobs from being scouted online.

Below are four very well respected dancers who have large Instagram followings. Ian Eastwood and Kirsten Dodgen are world reknowned choreographers who have danced with and choreographed for some of the most famous artists on the planet. 

I’m using two of my favorite dancers as primary sources to my point about professional dancers turning to social media and gaining a large following. Sean has 227.3K followers on TikTok and 1.5 million on Instagram. Charlize has 1.3 million followers on TikTok and 910K on Instagram. I’ve been watching both of their careers for years, they were trained at multiple studios. Sean is known best for his workshop classes that he teaches as well as participating in global dance battle competitions. Charlize was a competition dancer and grew popular on TikTok from participating in dance challenges. She has had professional dance opportunities extended to her such as dancing back up for Nicki Minaj on her current tour and as a part of the dance ensemble in the Mean Girls 2024 movie musical. Both dancers use social media to share their dance experiences, but also get opportunities for it. Below are videos they posted on their own TikTok accounts.

The reality TV docuseries Dance Moms first aired in 2011 and ran for a total of nine seasons. It followed the junior elite dance competition team from Abby Lee Dance Company in Pittsburg. The studio owner, Abby Lee Miller, was notorious for being extremely passionate about dance but also extremely demanding. The dancers on the show were under intense pressure from competing and learning from Miller, but the moms of the dancers brought all the drama. The selfishness, the fighting, the backstabbing, and the constant threat of leaving the team (all for the sake of dance) from the moms made this reality show exciting to watch. This reality show put the competition dance scene in the spotlight. Dancers from across the country became interested in learning from Miller.

The original girls of the team (Mackenzie Ziegler, Maddie Ziegler, Nia Sioux, Chloe Lukasiak, Paige Hyland and Brooke Hyland) ranged from 6-13 years old at the start of the show. During and after the show, the dancers grew a huge social media following and scored many other opportunites in the process. For example, Maddie's most famous opportunity was dancing in Sia's music video for her song Chandelier. She's been a dancer in many other music videos since then and has had a few acting opportunities. Mackenzie and Nia launched her music career. Chloe has co-founded her own dance competiton later in life. All the girls took part in countless modeling opportunities. Two other famous dancers to come from the show are Kendall Vertes and Jojo Siwa. Some of the girls still dance and some don't, but their social media fame comes mostly from being on Dance Moms.