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Dancers sometimes talk about finding the pocket \u2014 a kind of flow state where rhythm and movement are so perfectly married that the dancing is not just on the music, but in<\/em> it.<\/p>\n The choreographer and dancer Shay Latukolan lives in the pocket. His deceptively simple dances have an effortless groove, yet attend to every detail of the pop hooks they\u2019re often built for. And like those hooks, they get stuck in your head.<\/p>\n That catchiness acts as a lure in the rapper Childish Gambino\u2019s \u201cLittle Foot Big Foot\u201d video<\/a>, released this month. Latukolan\u2019s choreography blends old-school Nicholas Brothers-style<\/a> showmanship with TikTok dance vocabulary, an irresistible mix. Its charm makes the video\u2019s dark second-act twist \u2014 a signature move for Gambino (alter ego of the actor Donald Glover) \u2014 all the more shocking.<\/p>\n The tone is lighter but the dance imagery is just as vivid in the electronic band Jungle\u2019s \u201cBack on 74,\u201d<\/a> the video that earned Latukolan worldwide recognition when it went mega-viral last summer. Part of Jungle\u2019s \u201cVolcano,\u201d an album also available as a motion picture, it features a cast of phenomenal dancers. Latukolan\u2019s infectious choreography, with its silken \u201cSoul Train\u201d funk, makes full use of their considerable skill. Yet it was accessible enough that a chunk of social media started dancing along. The dance in \u201cLittle Foot Big Foot\u201d has a similar pull: Monyett Crump Jr., a performer in the video, said even the extras on set were determined to learn it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s really cool about what he does,\u201d said Joshua Lloyd-Watson of Jungle, known professionally as J Lloyd. \u201cHe makes everybody want to do it, and believe they can<\/em> do it. I certainly don\u2019t dance, but I think I can, when I watch the videos.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Latukolan, 31, may be behind multiple viral sensations, but he has little interest in generating social media buzz. \u201cThe TikTok generation, I have no idea what that is about,\u201d he said, laughing. And he\u2019s not caught up in the churn of the commercial music industry. After a brief time in Los Angeles, he now lives in Amsterdam, not far from where he grew up, and closer to the European art scenes that frequently inspire him.<\/p>\n \u201cThe music we get exposed to over here, the dance we get exposed to \u2014 I think that helps me come from a high art perspective, from a more theatrical perspective,\u201d he said in a video interview. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be the usual L.A. choreographer working for L.A. artists. I missed this different artistic energy I feel here, which seems more authentic to me.\u201d<\/p>\n That focus on authenticity has, in turn, made him only more popular in a social media culture with little patience for phonies. Though he says he doesn\u2019t understand TikTok, his account<\/a> has more than 172,000 followers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Latukolan was raised in a quiet Dutch town, finding solace and color in dance and movies. \u201cI was just a kid on the street, dancing with the other kids I grew up with,\u201d he said. From an early age he was making no-budget dance films with his friends, honing his freestyle skills and learning how to create choreography that could move with the camera. \u201cDance and film, both are moving images,\u201d he said, \u201cso they felt connected to me.\u201d<\/p>\n In his 20s, he began to earn music-industry jobs, collaborating with the British rapper Stormzy<\/a>, the Spanish pop star Rosal\u00eda<\/a> and the singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran<\/a>. The Jungle project came along in a roundabout way. The band hired two of Latukolan\u2019s good friends, Roch\u00e9 Apinsa and Ruben Chi, to choreograph a song from the \u201cVolcano\u201d album, \u201cGood Times \/ Problemz.\u201d<\/a> Since Apinsa and Chi were also dancing in the video, they brought in Latukolan as a movement director. J Lloyd and the director, Charlie Di Placido, were so impressed with Latukolan\u2019s inventive and quietly authoritative work that they asked him to choreograph the rest of the \u201cVolcano\u201d project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was a daunting task: a motion picture<\/a> made up of more than a dozen music videos<\/a>, each shot as a single take, the whole thing filmed over just a few days. Latukolan, a longtime Jungle fan, took to it with enthusiasm, rapidly creating detailed and impeccably musical sequences.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of choreographers just worry about tempo, just about snapping things really tight,\u201d Di Placido said, \u201cbut you can tell that Shay listens to the music as a complete soundscape.\u201d<\/p>\n Latukolan\u2019s nimble thinking also became an important asset on the \u201cLittle Foot Big Foot\u201d set. Originally, Latukolan said, he was to rehearse with Glover \u2014 one of his idols \u2014 for multiple weeks. But scheduling complications meant they had only four days together, for a video that runs more than six minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Crump said Latukolan\u2019s experience coming up as a freestyle dancer helps him adapt on the fly. He\u2019s accustomed to improvising, going with the flow both creatively and logistically.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s dope about Shay is that he comes from a community background, not an industry background, so being in the room with him is a little more pure and raw,\u201d said Crump, who has also worked with Latukolan on projects for the R&B singer Tinashe. \u201cHaving that freestyle side, the movement comes really fast, and it\u2019s naturally more eclectic.\u201d<\/p>\n Online commenters see all kinds of influences in Latukolan\u2019s dances. The choreographer Bob Fosse comes up often. The swinging hips and 1970s bounce of \u201cVolcano\u201d seem right out of the Fosse playbook<\/a>. The dancing trio in \u201cLittle Foot Big Foot\u201d appears to echo Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s \u201cSingle Ladies (Put a Ring on It),\u201d<\/a> itself inspired by Fosse\u2019s \u201cMexican Breakfast.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Latukolan is flattered by the comparison \u2014 and says Fosse\u2019s not not <\/em>an influence (though he knows his work mostly through Michael Jackson, who frequently quoted Fosse). But Latukolan is typically less deliberate with his references. He\u2019s more of a free-associative collagist, following where the music leads, mixing steps that span genres and time periods to create dance that feels both familiar and new. \u201cThe way the storytelling comes about, it comes from a very childlike state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He often lets a performer\u2019s natural tendencies shape the choreography, especially when working with an artist like Glover, who is \u201clow-key a great dancer,\u201d Crump said. The hand-waving gesture in \u201cLittle Foot Big Foot\u201d that fans on social media connected to \u201cSingle Ladies\u201d is actually a Gloverism. In \u201cGuava Island,\u201d<\/a> Glover\u2019s 2019 movie musical, \u201che was doing it all<\/em> the time,\u201d Latukolan said, laughing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Latukolan seems to inspire loyalty in his collaborators, an unusual thing in the musical-chairs commercial industry. Crump calls him \u201cone of those people you drop everything to work with.\u201d Glover\u2019s tightly edited page on X (formerly Twitter) features fewer than 20 posts, but one of them is a tribute to Latukolan<\/a>. Di Placido said that when it comes to Jungle projects, Latukolan is \u201cbasically part of the furniture now.\u201d<\/p>\n The dedication is mutual. \u201cNo shade to people who want to make TikToks and go viral,\u201d Latukolan said, \u201cbut the people I love to work with and have been lucky to work with are people who are invested in going a little deeper, making something beautiful, something special.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n