If you’ve ever thought that gymnastics at a professional level and ‘moonwalking’ can’t go hand in hand, think again. The young gymnastics prodigy Katelyn Ohashi has grown into an internet celebrity thanks to her stunning athletic performances – and a Michael Jackson inspired choreography.
When Katelyn shows her athletic ability, she gives an entire performance.
Some people are even claiming that she’s reinventing gymnastics performances, and it’s easy to see why. From the very first second, Katelyn manages to grasp the audience’s attention with a unique starting pose followed by a short Michael Jackson routine.
After a few seconds, she performs an incredible double round flawlessly. And the choreography doesn’t stop there – every second, every detail is impeccably done and it truly makes for an astonishing performance.
You can even spot members of her team doing the Michael Jackson moves along with her!
This athletic routine was performed at the FX 2018 Pac 12 Championships, and she definitely managed to surprise both the audiences and the judges with her tremendous amount of talent. She’s especially praised for her gymnastics talent and rightfully so, the young lady has amassed several ‘perfect 10’ floor routines and won the 2013 American Gymnastics Cup.
Even though she had a large setback in 2015 due to a fracture, she returned two years later even better than before. At the time, she was called the best gymnast in the world – now she’s looking to reclaim that reputation. And she clearly knows how to impress in this phenomenal performance.
She uses the King of Pop’s music as her background and it all works so wonderfully. The mix of the mind-bending gymnastics and smooth choreography is so unique and surprising, but the end result is absolutely phenomenal.
Katelyn finished her performance with choreography on ‘The Way You Make Feel.’
When she gracefully nailed that final move, the crowd absolutely erupted. Everything about this video is so infections, from Katelyn’s personality to the mesmerizing moves she performs. Of course, after the final gymnastics move, the performance had to end with an iconic move from ‘Thriller’. And since this is a Michael Jackson inspired performance, you’ll often find her moonwalking in between exercises.
The entire performance was universally praised – both by the judges, the audience and people watching at home.
In fact, Katelyn has amassed millions of views on YouTube for this routine, and that’s not her only performance that went viral.
The gymnast is also incredibly popular on Facebook, where her videos have been seen over a hundred million times. As for that world championship? Her college won the gold for the eighteenth time!
More recently, the talented gymnast performed an energetic, R&B mash-up with songs such as “Proud Mary”, “September”, and “I Want You Back”. “The Way You Make Me Feel” by Michael Jackson made a comeback in her new routine. The whole thing only lasts about ninety seconds – but there’s not a single second in there that’s not exciting.
“Floor is where I get to express myself,” she said to NBC News. “That’s like, my party time, like my play time.”
And even though Katelyn makes it look so easy, experts say that her routines are incredibly difficult to master and to perform on a professional stage.
“Her whole floor routine is ridiculously hard,” the UCLA head coach told the student’s newspaper. “Every single thing about it, including the backward split that she does after her leap pass.”
You can clearly see how passionate Katelyn is, and critics are calling this latest performance her best one yet, saying that they’ve “never seen her perform like this before.”
And this second performance? Another Perfect 10, of course.
Katelyn has a habit of racking up perfect scores for difficult routines involving plenty of flips and jumps, and it doesn’t look like she’s stopping anytime soon. The sky truly is the limit for this talented young woman, and we can’t wait to see with what amazing choreographic performance she comes up next.
Be sure to check out her Michael Jackson performance in the video below.
