“You don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “So it’s kind of stressful, but it’s exciting. You have adrenaline.”
Barbie Smith Simons, a retired project manager from Madison, Wisconsin, watched McGrath’s original video “over and over” after she first saw it. Her feed kept delivering more.
“They were all really good dancers,” Simons, 60, who is not a trained dancer, said. “And I was like, well, I want to do it.”
Coming home from a trip in February, she took her shot at Denver International Airport. With her sister recording and her smile wide, she whipped her carry-on around dramatically and tossed a shoe onto the carpet before hopping in a circle on one foot and launching into a cartwheel.
“I did it because I kind of live with joy,” she said. More than 560,000 people have watched her contribution, and McGrath made his own video cheering her on.
“I’ve had so many people say, ‘I really, really needed this laugh today, I watched it 30 times, thank you,’” she said.
When photographer Saindy Pyles was on a layover in Atlanta during a Belize vacation with her husband last week, she scanned the terminal.
“What are the chances I’m going to see one of those TikTok dancers dancing and I could really be right there and maybe catch a shoe or something and then clap at the end?” she wondered.
Finding none, Pyles, 34, shrugged and executed a few twirls and jumps with her somewhat embarrassed husband filming. “I wish I could do all these pirouettes and jumps,” she said in an interview.
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Scott Schieber, an American doctor who lives in New Zealand, has not hopped on the trend, but he took to TikTok late last month to urge other dancers to keep it going.
“I am so impressed with the way these people can dance and spin in one spot without falling over,” he said in the video. “I could never do that; I find it amazing. Please keep making those videos.”
In an interview, he said he now feels like “the ambassador of the airport TikTok dance” and wanted to praise the skills he was seeing.
“I like to call out talent and I think these dancers are pretty incredible,” said Schieber, 58.
Meanwhile, McGrath, the father of a new baby, has continued to film his own airport dances and encourage others who are dancing, even fetching a shoe for one young girl. He signed a deal with a luggage company. He has added more songs to the airport repertoire, going with Dion’s My Heart Will Go On in a video he posted this week.
In an interview last month, he said he tries to nail a dance the first time but maxes out at three takes. He listens to music playing from a phone in the pocket of whoever is filming, though “it’s not obviously blasting”. And he carries hand sanitiser to use after spending time on the floor.
McGrath said he finds the trend “so much fun” – though he hopes everyone who imitates him is being as careful about their surroundings (and shoe-tossing) as he is. He teaches dance at conventions and has an online mentorship program; numerous young dancers have taken up the airport dance challenge.
McGrath said that while people in the background don’t appear to react while he dances, they will often approach him afterwards to say they enjoyed the performance. He has gotten some negative comments online, but most are positive.
“For the most part, they love seeing it and it brings them a lot of joy,” he said. “Obviously, it brings me joy.”
