Those Sounds (Brrr-ah Bah Bah-BAH) You Hear? Choreographers at Work.

In dance, a wordless art, an improvised language of rhythmic noises helps communicate the shape and feel of movement.

TikTok teems with talented vocalists. One of the most popular is a choreographer.

In a TikTok clip that now has more than 5 million views, the dance artist Sean Bankhead leads a tutorial for his routine to Cardi B’s song “Up” — doing the steps, but also singing them. “Ooo, ooo, a-bock-a-bock-a BOCK!” he belts, his voice echoing, or maybe summoning, his body’s syncopated rolls and digs. “Ooo-crack, a-bookie bookie BOO!”

Bankhead’s vocal virtuosity so delighted viewers that the clip’s audio track went on its own viral journey. It became the score for more than 17,000 other videos on TikTok — from remakes of his dance to music lessons and hair tutorials.

First posted in 2021, Bankhead’s “bookie bookie boo” sound has now become part of TikTok lore. (It still occasionally makes the rounds online.) And it helped spur a wave of viral choreography sound-effect videos, which have introduced a mainstream audience to the peculiar, irresistible joys of dancerly communication.

Dance artists often spout rhythmic medleys of noises and counts during classes and rehearsals. In a wordless art that lacks a widely used form of written notation, these sounds, poetic and onomatopoeic, are strikingly efficient at conveying both what the steps are and how they should be performed. It’s an improvised language that can capture choreography’s cadence, texture and feel.

The tap star Ayodele Casel says this kind of vocalizing gets at the very soul of a dance. “I do it while I’m teaching, I do it in rehearsals with dancers, I do it in interviews,” she said. “When someone says, ‘OK, it’s a shuffle, hop, step, heel, toe, heel’ — that, to me, doesn’t carry the spirit of the rhythm. But ‘dah-dah OON dah-sicka un’ — now you have the groove. Now you have the tone.”