Venice High School labeled 'TikTok High' after staircase goes viral with dance craze

Ryan McKinnon, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
·2 min read
Dancing videos with the Venice High School staircase have gone viral on TikTok.
Dancing videos with the Venice High School staircase have gone viral on TikTok.

A staircase at Venice High School has gone viral, as the sunny spot has become a wildly popular background for teenagers posting dance videos to TikTok, the video-sharing social media site.

Several students at the school have posted videos of themselves performing choreographed dances on the stairs.

Other TikTok users have superimposed themselves dancing over the staircase background, with the green screen effect making it look as if countless Venice High students are posting videos.

“These past few weeks students have been posting their dancing videos on these stairs, and they've been going pretty viral, and it's kind of becoming like a trend,” said TikTok user “King Asante” in an explainer video.

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The hashtag #venicehighschool has 13 million views on TikTok, and #venicestairs has 4.7 million views.

The school's most popular TikTok star, football player Jayshon Platt, jumpstarted the craze.

Platt, who has 394,000 followers on the platform, has posted several videos of himself and his friends dancing in the staircase. A video he posted before Thanksgiving with three backup dancers in the staircase has nearly 2 million views on TikTok.

Venice High School student Jayshon Platt, center, has made the school's staircase a viral sensation after posting videos of himself and friends dancing in the stairwell that have garnered millions of views.
Venice High School student Jayshon Platt, center, has made the school's staircase a viral sensation after posting videos of himself and friends dancing in the stairwell that have garnered millions of views.

The viral videos have some users seeing Venice High as a tourist destination and lamenting their bad luck that they do not go to such a famous school. One girl posted a video claiming she “flew halfway across the country to visit the stair school.”

“I WANNA GO THERE SO BAD BUT I LIVE LIKE 3 HOURS AWAY,” wrote one commenter.

“Many people are calling this school TikTok High,” Asante said.

Other posts show the staircase packed with students with the caption, “You go to the staircase school, and it's overpopulated. Ya'll please don't transfer.”

Venice High is 297 students over capacity this year, according to school Chief Operations Officer Jody Dumas, and the district is planning to begin construction on a new high school in Wellen Park in the summer to alleviate crowding.

District Spokesman Craig Maniglia was not available to comment on the TikTok trend.

Ryan McKinnon covers schools for the Herald-Tribune. Connect with him at ryan.mckinnon@heraldtribune.com or on Twitter: @JRMcKinnon. Support the Sarasota Herald-Tribune by subscribing today.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: 'TikTok High': Florida's Venice High School goes viral with staircase dancing