While they’ve achieved TikTok fame, danced in music videos and performed in onstage productions, Nolen Dubuc and Kameron Couch are starring in their newest project: being freshmen in the Gloria Kaufman School of Dance.
For Dubuc, a Canadian-based dancer, actor and influencer, dance was what led him to each of his major projects.
“Pretty much every job I got — at least early on — was an acting role with dancing or a dancing role in a movie,” Dubuc said.
Dubuc has performed in “Prom Pact,” “13: The Musical,” “Billy Elliot The Musical (Stratford Festival)” and numerous other onstage and screen productions. Throughout his career as a young actor and dancer, he slowly began his social media career. Initially, social media was a shared project with his manager, a family friend.
“He was like, ‘Post three times a day. Be consistent,’” Dubuc said. “I think, at the time, I had 500 followers. Literally, for a year straight, I posted three times a day, every single day.”
Dancer Kameron Couch followed a very similar path to Dubuc, posting three times a day as well during the COVID-19 pandemic. Couch has performed on “Dancing with the Stars: Juniors,” music videos with artists like Kesha and “Insecure” on HBO. Additionally, Couch has trained with the renowned dance group (and viral TikTok studio) Project 21. Couch described how the COVID-19 quarantine left her wanting to pick up a new hobby, and during the growth of TikTok, she leaned into a new niche: smoothie bowl videos.
“Once that smoothie bowl video blew up, my videos started to go more viral, but it was also a sense that I had to post every day,” Couch said. “I had to see what worked. Most of the time, it was smoothie bowls, ‘Day in the Life,’ and ‘Get Ready with Me.’ That’s the brand I started to create out of that.”
@kameron.couch DIML as a freshman at USC! #funkamentals #college #usc #diml #trend
♬ Rock and Roll Session - Canal Records JP
Both Couch and Dubuc began their careers on TikTok accounts before they turned
18, and in order to qualify for monetization benefits, users must be over 18 years old. The TikTok Live feature is blocked behind an age verification. Users are required to be eighteen years or older to qualify for the TikTok Creator Fund, which compensates creators for their videos and content. Additionally, further restrictions are placed on users 13 and under, who cannot post publicly.
Since Couch and Dubuc were underage, their accounts would sometimes get “shadow-banned,” where TikTok limits how often users find the creators’ content without notification, leading to a decrease in engagement.
When Dubuc reached 130,000 followers, TikTok took away his comment section because he was fifteen, enormously decreasing the engagement with his videos. As a result, he started to post on a “spam account,” an account used for fun or random content that a user would not post on their more professional main account.
“Within a month, I had more followers on that account than it took me a year and a half on the other account,” Dubuc said. “I think I got to 200,000 followers, and then, I just started posting dance videos with my friends at school, and literally, I was gaining 100,000 followers a week for two months.”
Now, Dubuc has 1.8 million followers on TikTok, and Couch has 2.7 million followers. Both creators have expanded their presence to other platforms such as Instagram and YouTube, with similarly high metrics. Though both influencers had platforms before their admission to USC, the dancers said they chose to step away from the professional world of music video and performance gigs to focus on their artistic journeys as Kaufman students.
For Dubuc, USC had been his dream university from the moment he set foot into the Kaufman building.
“USC was my first audition,” Dubuc said. “You walk in, and it’s the most beautiful building. Everyone was so nice, and everyone was so good. It was so inspiring. Everything after USC wasn’t the same.”
Couch shared a similar sentiment.
“I literally could not reject USC,” Couch said. “It’s something that you can’t get twice, so I just went for it.”
USC’s Gloria Kaufman School of Dance typically enrolls approximately 24 students per year through multiple rounds, including an online video submission, an in-person audition in multiple dance styles and an interview.
Now, Dubuc and Couch find their own ways to balance their social media presence with their classes. For Dubuc, he said he shifted his perspective from feeling like he had to post multiple times a day to posting when he feels inspired. For example, some of his most recent videos on TikTok include him dancing with fellow Kaufman dance students.
@notnolendubuc unexpected duo #hardlaunch @keira redpath
♬ WEEKND AND ANITTA x SAO PAULO x SHOWMUSIK EDIT - Showmusik
Couch has shifted her focus from smoothie bowls to videos showcasing her life as a Kaufman major.
“I realized that people just want to see what I’m doing, so I’ve been making ‘Day in the Life’ videos and ‘Get Ready with Me’ videos, stuff that I do in my everyday that I don’t have to go out of my way to make social media videos,” Couch said.
Looking forward to their dance careers at USC, Couch and Dubuc share an excitement for what’s to come at Kaufman. For Dubuc, he’s excited to watch his fellow peers dance in auditions, and for Couch, she anticipates the Fall BFA Showcase in December.
“I think the community is so amazing,” Dubuc said. “I’ve never been in a space in my whole life where everyone is so talented.”