Toc Toc Dance AI: Do the Viral Door-Knock Dance From a Photo, Solo, Duo or Trio

A guy in a navy sweater walks straight up to the camera and stares into it, completely deadpan. He backs off, lifts one knee, hops on the other foot and knocks on a door that isn't there. Arms out wide, a sideways skip across an empty white room with a kick back, then he turns to face you with his arms flung open, as if nothing happened. Eleven seconds, not one smile.

That is the Toc Toc dance, and since the end of September it has been copied by dancers, roommates, couples and more than a few dogs. This post covers what the dance is, the steps move by move, and how to do it from a single photo, with a friend or two, or with your pet.

What is the Toc Toc dance?

The clip everyone copies is one phone shot in a bare white room: a door on the left, a white chest of drawers on the right, a light wooden floor, and a camera that never moves. One dancer, one take, a face that gives nothing away. Copies followed in rooms just like it, then in supermarket aisles, office corridors and at parties, and then came the AI versions with cats and dogs up on their hind legs.

The name is the knock itself. "Toc toc" is how a knock on a door sounds in French, Spanish or Italian, and the fist tapping an invisible door is the move everybody remembers. You will also see it called the Jean Phil dance, because so many of the copies were filmed in the same look: a bob wig, an old-fashioned suit and a dead-serious face. Jean Phil has a routine of his own too, the Gang Gang dance, which we covered in our Jean Phil dance guide.

The Toc Toc dance steps, move by move

Our Toc Toc Dance template keeps the whole thing: the same kind of bare white room, the same fixed camera, one continuous shot, eleven seconds, vertical. The routine goes like this:

1. The walk-up. You start right at the lens, your face filling the frame, then back away into the room.
2. The knock. Hop on one foot with the other knee bent up and knock on an invisible door with your fist, a few times over.
3. Arms wide. Stop and fling both arms open, palms up, as if asking what all the fuss is about.
4. The sideways skip. Turn side-on and skip across the room, kicking one leg back.
5. One more knock. Kick back again while the fist knocks one last time.
6. The finish. Face the camera and open your arms wide.

Through all of it, no smile. The straight face is half the joke, so if you are going to laugh, save it for after.

And in motion. The animations in this post are silent and shortened; the real clip runs the full eleven seconds.

Solo, Duo or Trio: how many dancers?

The Toc Toc dance gets funnier with company, so the template comes in three versions. At the top of the template page you can switch between Solo (one photo), Duo (two photos) and Trio (three photos), and it costs the same whichever you pick.

In Duo, photo 1 dances on the left and photo 2 on the right. In Trio it is left, middle and right. Everyone stands in one row with a little space in between and does every hop, knock and kick at the same moment, like a crew that rehearsed. For groups the camera stands further back so nobody gets cut off, and the sideways skip becomes a short one so nobody bumps into anyone.

Each photo can be a person or a pet, and you can mix them: you and your partner, you and your cat, three friends, or two friends with the family dog in the middle.

Three friends in sync look like this:

Which photos work best

• A sharp face in good light. The clip opens with the dancer's face right at the lens, so a blurry photo shows straight away.
• The whole body, if you can. The Toc Toc dance is all hops and kicks, so legs and shoes are in shot the whole time. A head-to-toe photo helps a lot.
• One subject per photo. Two people in one picture and the template cannot tell who should dance. For a duo or a trio, use one photo per dancer.
• Your outfit comes along. People keep the clothes from their photo, shoes included. The yellow cardigan and the black loafers below came straight from the photo.

Use only photos of adults who agree to be in the video, or of your own pets. Pets keep their own face, fur colour and markings, stand up on their hind legs and dance with their own paws. The background of your photo never comes along: it is always the same bare white room, so anyone can tell it's the same trend.

Can your cat or dog do the Toc Toc dance?

Yes: set its photo to "Pet". In Solo, your pet gets the whole routine to itself and does it all on its hind legs, from the hops and the knocks with a furry paw to the wide arms, the sideways skip and the kick back. The ragdoll below did every step, its tail swinging out behind it on each skip.

In Duo and Trio, lower your expectations a little: next to people, pets dance less. The grey cat in our duo stood up the whole time, opened its paws for the arms-wide moment and did a few small hops, but skipped most of the kicks. The golden retriever in the middle of our trio stood on its hind legs for all eleven seconds with its tongue out and mostly watched its two humans do the work. Honestly, that is part of the charm. If you want a pet that dances every single step, give it the Solo version; in a trio, the middle spot works best.

Make your Toc Toc dance video with ZOOOP

1. Open the Toc Toc Dance template and pick Solo, Duo or Trio at the top of the page.
2. Upload your photos and set each one to "Person" or "Pet". Keep 480p, or pick 720p if you want it sharper.
3. Hit generate and download the clip.

No prompt, no editing. The white room, the fixed camera and every knock are already in place.

What surprised us while building the template

The golden retriever could not keep a straight face. Every clip opens with a close-up at the lens, and the people and the ragdoll stared into it as deadpan as the original. The golden retriever showed up grinning with its tongue out, just like in its photo. It was too good to fix.

Tails do their own dance. The golden retriever's and the ragdoll's tails swing out behind them on every sideways skip. Nobody asked for that, but it is the detail that makes people look twice: that is a real pet dancing.

Everyone keeps their spot. In Duo and Trio nobody steps in front of anybody else, and the photo you put on the left stays on the left for the whole clip. Decide who stands where before you upload.

Pets vary more from run to run. People come out looking much the same every time. Pets vary more: now and then a face isn't quite right, or a hop looks a bit sloppy. If you don't like one, generate it again; the second one is usually the keeper.

More ways to play

Do the Toc Toc dance with your partner as a Duo, then make a Solo of your dog and post them back to back. Or get your flatmates or your team into a Trio and see who keeps the straightest face. For more dance ideas, browse the AI dance templates, and for more pets, the AI pet video templates. Everything that turns a photo into a clip lives in the template library, and if you would rather write your own scene from scratch, start from AI video generation.

One white room, one invisible door, up to three dancers. Knock knock, it's your turn: open the Toc Toc Dance template.