Mikailadancer
Most content creators find one lane that they excel in and stick to it, but that’s not the case for Mikailadancer, As her online handle implies, the redhead became popular thanks to her daring dance choreographies; however, she has since dabbled in music, modeling, OnlyFans, and just about everything else you can think of.
Born Mikaila Murphy on 27th January 2000, in Michigan, USA and raised alongside siblings Andrew and Alyssa, Mikaila is a self-described foodie and traveler with a love for trying new things. Like so many internet personalities, she rose to fame during the pandemic days of early 2020 and never looked back.
As a child, Mikaila’s passion for dancing was already evident, as she enrolled in classes at just three years old. Aged 10, she began taking acting classes, which would serve her well in later projects. Mikaila is 5ft 4ins (163cm) tall and weighs 143lbs (65kgs),
Career
During an enlightening 2022 interview, Mikaila revealed that she’d always wanted to become an entertainer and began using social media when she was 12 years old. ‘I always had dreams of like, being a big influencer… I was always filming stuff,’ she said.
Despite majoring in dance at college, Mikaila dropped out after a year having become bored of the experience, and wanting to see the world outside her hometown. COVID hit shortly afterwards, and the dancer realized she had a huge online potential after going from a million TikTok followers to two million in just five weeks.
By that point, Mikaila had already done a small brand deal, and soon had to choose between an internet career or a more traditional job. According to the redhead, she decided to capitalize on her social media hype, because the option of returning to college would always be there.
From the beginning, Mikaila’s parents were supportive of her dreams – in fact, her mother was the one who set up the choreographer’s Facebook account and took her first profile picture at the dance studio. Surprisingly, Mikaila used to be so shy that she refused to get changed in front of anyone at dance competitions; however, as time passed she came out of her shell, and began doing what she’s best-known for: twerking.
After her 18th birthday, Mikaila attended her first heels class (a dance class in which all the dancers wear vertiginous high heels while performing to hip-hop or pop music). It took a while for the Michigan native to perfect her twerk, but in the meantime, she had already gone viral on TikTok after posting videos of herself dancing in public. When she uploaded a jokey twerk video with a friend one day, Mikaila never expected it to be seen millions of times; however, one thing led to another, and she soon found that her twerk videos were more popular than the rest of her content.
The model has admitted that it’s frustrating when people overlook her years of dance training and refer to her as a twerker, but at the same time, she knows that it’s part of her job. ‘I’m not gonna lie, for a couple of months I was sad, like, no one knows I’ve been dancing since I was three, I’ve put so much work into this, I’m an actual technically trained dancer,’ she told YouTuber Allison Interviews.
After moving to Los Angeles, Mikaila linked up with other popular twerk dancers such as Courtney Sanderson and Cassidy Payne, and they created a small but tight-knit community with members from all over the world: as it happens, one collaborator traveled from Finland to meet the dancers and enjoyed the experience so much she decided to relocate to Los Angeles as well.
As Mikaila, Courtney, Cassidy, and the rest began tagging each other in their online content, they helped each other’s fanbase grow. These days, the twerk collective dance together regularly and also teach aspiring twerkers.
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Regarding the racial pushback that Mikaila has received for her twerking – due to it being an African dance which became popular in America thanks to the 1990s New Orleans bounce music scene – she was inundated with negative comments after uploading her first videos. ‘They used to call me an unseasoned chicken trying to twerk,’ she laughingly told Allison.
However, as Mikaila’s twerking skills improved and she made sure to explain to her followers where the dance initially came from, she no longer received criticism from a racial standpoint. ‘I know my ancestors didn’t create it,’ she said. According to the choreographer, she was also surrounded by people of color growing up, which helped influence her love for the unique dance style.
Moving on to Mikaila’s music career, in 2022 she released her first single, “What Goes Around Comes Around”, and celebrated the song with a launch party which was attended by social media personalities such as Mitchell Eason. Other songs since then include “Concentration”, “Masterplan”, and “U Wish U Were Still With Me”. Although Mikaila has yet to release an album or EP, her music videos have all been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube.
Personal Life
In July 2023, Mikaila hinted that she’d become single after posting a photo of herself in Bali which she captioned ‘I’d wish you the best, but you already had it.’ This came as news to her followers, as the influencer rarely publicizes details of her private life.
We do know that the choreographer was in a relationship with musician Ulysses III from 2020 to 2022. The couple reportedly broke after Ulysses cheated on Mikaila; it’s long been speculated that Ulysses felt insecure about her twerk videos. Around the same time that Mikaila and Ulysses split, she created an OnlyFans account which she uses to upload adult content.
More recently, Mikaila has been putting her platform to good use by attending charity events such as the Babes in Toyland annual toy giveaway. In October 2023, she was also photographed at an event for breast cancer awareness.
