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Latter-day Saint ‘Dancing Dad’ Has Millions of Followers on Social Media

Creating a dance video with his kids results in Ricky Pond gaining millions of followers and enriching family experiences

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The family of Ricky and Roxane Pond is pictured outside the Rexburg Idaho Temple in Rexburg, Idaho, in November 2024. Photo provided by Ricky Pond, courtesy of Church News.All rights reserved.

This story appears here courtesy of TheChurchNews.com. It is not for use by other media.

By Trent Toone, Church News

In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted widespread shelter-in-place recommendations, the Pond family was at home in Yakima, Washington, when father Ricky Pond realized his teenage children were restless and “bored out of their minds.”

One Sunday afternoon after Church, “they came up to me and said, ‘Hey Dad, come and do a dance with us on TikTok.’”

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Ricky Pond, a Latter-day Saint from Yakima, Washington, is known as "The Dancing Dad" for his dance videos on social media. Photo provided by Ricky Pond, courtesy of Church News.All rights reserved.

Pond’s initial response was a hard “no.” He liked dancing but wasn’t interested, plus he was aware of a trend at the time for young people to put their parents on social media and make fun of them in hopes of gaining followers or going viral.

“No, you guys spend way too much time on that app,” the 51-year-old father said.

The Pond children didn’t give up. After additional rejections, daughter Audrey and son Dallin Pond informed their father they had created an account for him — now he had to post something.

Ricky Pond then looked to his wife, Roxane, for direction.

“Just go do a dance with them,” she said.

So he did, never suspecting that over the next five years he and his family would bond with one another as they created scores of fun and entertaining dance videos that would amass millions of followers on various social media platforms and earn him the nickname “The Dancing Dad.”

Since then, his slick, energetic dance moves have garnered widespread fame and popularity in India, he has done brand collaborations with companies and media interviews, and dancing near a picture of the Savior in many of those videos has resulted in numerous opportunities for his family to discuss their faith and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Mostly, Pond is grateful for the chance he has had to create happy memories with his family, produce wholesome online content and build relationships with people he otherwise never would have met.

“It’s been quite an adventure,” he said. “Most of it was just to spend some quality time with my kids and enjoy the time we had together. ... It’s really about relationships.”

The Backfire

One of Dallin and Audrey Pond’s greatest ambitions in March 2020 was to create a viral video and get their social media accounts verified. They studied the TikTok algorithm and came up with the idea to get their parents to dance in the video.

“We had this whole elaborate plan in our heads. Dad is going to totally mess up this dance and everyone is going to make fun of him and we’re going to crush it,” Audrey Pond said. “In hindsight, where we went wrong is that we didn’t consider that my father had been dancing since he was 8 years old.”

Ricky Pond began clogging at age 8 and continued all the way through high school. After serving in the Washington D.C. North and Maryland Baltimore missions, Pond attended Ricks College (now BYU–Idaho), where he performed with the school’s folk dance and clogging groups. He and his wife eventually settled in Yakima, Washington, where he works as a graphic designer for a fruit company.

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The family of Ricky and Roxane Pond is pictured in Yakima, Washington, in 2021. Photo provided by Ricky Pond, courtesy of Church News.All rights reserved.

The first dance the Pond family recorded featured “The Renegade,” which Ricky didn’t like because it was mostly arm movements. To him, dancing is a total body experience.

Even so, they posted the video, and within days he had hundreds of followers. They continued learning dances and posting videos and within weeks his online audience reached into the tens of thousands.

“It didn’t blow up,” said Dallin Pond, a 19-year-old freshman at BYU-Idaho, “but it was definitely more views than me and my sister had ever gotten.”

The children’s great plan had backfired. Audrey Pond remembers her father affectionately teasing: “You’ve never gotten 500 likes on your videos. Look how popular I am,” she said with a laugh. “He liked rubbing it into our faces that he was getting more likes than we ever received.”

Ricky Pond added, “They thought they were going to go viral because they were embarrassing their dad, but I kind of turned the tables of them.”

Quite a Following

“What are we doing next? I have time to do one dance every day,” Pond began saying to his children each day. While it was fun to learn a dance, make a video and grow their audience, Pond also hoped his children learned that consistently working at something can lead to success.

That has certainly been the case for Pond. He has continued to post a daily dance video, rarely taking a day off in the last five years. He started off with songs from the 1980s and 1990s, then moved on to learning dances from other countries and cultures, including Somalian, Ethiopian, Arabic dabke and Bollywood songs. They have made a concerted effort to make each video clean, family friendly and safe for all viewers.

Fans encouraged them to use other social media platforms, so they expanded to Instagram and others, which increased their audience.

As of January 25, 2025, Pond, husband and father of four, has more than 2.3 million followers on TikTok, 1.1 million followers on Instagram and more than 52,000 on Facebook. They also have a YouTube channel with nearly 10,000 subscribers.

Missionary Work

While serving as the ward mission leader, Ricky Pond invited the local elders to participate in his videos, leading to missionary conversations online.

In other videos, “The Dancing Dad” unintentionally danced in front of a picture of the Savior on the wall in his home. Commenters noticed and began asking such questions like “Are you a Christian?” or “Where can I get the painting?”

In other videos, they danced in Sunday clothes and intentionally placed a smaller picture of Jesus Christ somewhere in the background. Each time someone inevitably commented, “I found Jesus.”

Many conversations about faith and beliefs followed. The Ponds also became acquainted with other Latter-day Saints worldwide.

“It became an easy way for us to, as a family, do missionary work together,” Audrey Pond said. “You can have so many missionary opportunities by just being yourself.”

Dallin Pond said, “We’ve been able to spread the gospel a little bit through each video because we made an effort to include Jesus Christ somewhere in the background.”

Said Ricky Pond: “You can share the gospel without pushing the gospel. It’s given us the opportunity to hopefully show the Church in a different light, in a sense that we are just like everybody else.”

Family Blessings

Audrey Pond, now a 22-year-old health psychology major at BYU–Idaho, remembers feeling shocked when a woman at a fast food restaurant recognized her from a video. She was less than amused by her father’s reaction.

“He [Dad] just ate it up. He thought it was so funny,” she said. “He was like, ‘How does it feel to have people ask you if I’m your dad because I’m famous,’ and just joke about it.”

Now it’s not uncommon for a complete stranger to recognize her as she walks to class. Her roommates delight in introducing her as the daughter of a famous father on social media.

While it is at times annoying, family members say the experience has been a fascinating journey full of blessings and new opportunities.

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The family of Ricky and Roxane Pond is pictured in Rexburg, Idaho, in November 2024. Photo provided by Ricky Pond, courtesy of Church News.All rights reserved.

“It has blessed our family tremendously,” said Dallin Pond, who helps his father with videos and managing their social media accounts. “It has definitely brought us a lot closer together. We’ve spent hours together, worked through things, we’ve fought and argued, we’ve laughed. I consider my parents and family members my best friends.”

What Audrey Pond learned is how people appreciated their authenticity.

“We didn’t ever try to be anybody or anything that we weren’t. We never put on a show or pretended to be like a picture-perfect family,” she said. “It taught me that I don’t need to worry about what other people think about me; people love when I’m being myself.”

Other Opportunities

In addition to the family sharing its faith, other opportunities have come.

In 2022, Ricky Pond appeared on NBC’s “Dancing With Myself.”

Last August, Ricky and Dallin Pond traveled to Mumbai, India, to tour, collaborate with other content creators, learn dances and do other activities to connect with their fanbase.

He’s been featured in many news articles and podcasts, mostly in India.

Pond has also collaborated to do dances for Netflix, Disney+, Duluth Trading Co. and Schick Razors, although he’s quick to add that he’s not using his social media platform to make money.

“I just want to be authentic to who I am, share my talent and hopefully people are entertained,” he said.

How long will Pond continue to dance and make videos?

“I’ll keep doing it as long as I can do it,” he said. “I look forward to the day when my grandkids are old enough to start dancing and do dances with them.”

Copyright 2025 Deseret News Publishing Company.

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