There are plenty of reasons people watch YouTube videos and make them go viral – and sometimes we’re simply at a loss to figure out why.

If you were to simply watch María José Sánchez Parra’s video titled “Borboletinha” you might be confused as to how it garnered over half a million views since it was posted in May of 2019. After all, it’s just a bunch of elementary school-aged children dancing to a Portuguese children’s song about a butterfly making a chocolate cake.

The dancing itself is really more like hopping along a complex hopscotch board.

Even those descriptions make it sound more interesting than it is.

But when you watch other videos Sánchez has uploaded, you’ll see that she’s got quite a following, partly from those interested in the demonstrations of her scholarship on “the musical language.”

It turns out that Sánchez teaches at both the University of Castilla–La Mancha (UCLM) in Spain as well as the Diego Ortiz Municipal School of Music in Toledo, Spain where she is a professor of music and movement and musical language. She’s also the author of multiple articles on using music and dance as a way to communicate.

So while her videos are simply elementary dance steps, they’re really pedagogical tools for those teaching musical appreciation.

She also has her fair share of instrumental performances (sometimes on makeshift drums on both Instagram and YouTube) – from nursery rhymes to classical music, students are encouraged to feel the rhythm.

In a course she teaches, called “Live the Music” she also instructs future teachers on ways “to bring music through play and body expression to our students since the playful element (the game) is very important for the child to surrender spontaneously to learning.”

Let’s put it this way – getting up and moving around, as well as having fun, make the mind and the body more prone to learning. When was the last time you did some recreational hopping?

NOW the video of a bunch of jumping children makes sense. As Prof. Sánchez bangs her drum to the rhythm and demonstrates the dance, the children each learn how to move in an intuitive manner as well as cooperate to finish the dance/game.

In a video with adults doing the same type of dance to the same folk song, things get a little more complicated. The steps are the same, but two people start at opposite ends of the “board” and getting the steps correct and performing them to the beat is integral to not running into one another. You need other people to get it right in order to finish.

This simple little dancing game spurs a sense of rhythm as well.

The “grid” used in the “Borboletinha” videos is roughly the same as those used in some of her other videos of coordinated dance, including one watched by well over 1 million viewers. It involves older students and more complex moves, but it’s not all that much more sophisticated.

Still, the same elements of coordination and cooperation are there.

In fact, it looks like a great way to give your body more exercise in a low-pressure group setting!

While many of the commenters either insist they’d mess up this dance from the get-go or try to trace it to their own culture, that’s really missing the point. It’s simply one of many ways to get kids to “feel the music” – an ability many of us have lost since our school days.

Be sure to scroll down below to see the deceptively simple “Borboletinha” dance by the professor’s elementary school-aged students.

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Source: Maria Jose Sanchez Parra via YouTube, UCLM,