Aerobicon / Deceptacon Dance

About

Deceptacon Dance is YouTube fad where people record themselves dancing to the electroclash band Le Tigre's single "Deceptacon". (See also: Single Ladies Dance, Napoleon Dynamite Dance, OK Go on Treadmills)

Origin

On January 23rd, 2006, YouTube user "iamthewalruss" posted a grainy low quality video of two men dressed in brown suits and yellow hats doing an energetic and well synchronized dance to "Deceptacon". Since it's debut, numerous video recreations have been uploaded to YouTube, typically including groups of two or more people emulating what has been called dubbed the "Aerobicon" dance.

Le Tigre

Le Tigre is an indie electroclash band formed in 1998 by Kathleen Hannah, Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning. Their lyrics are characterized by allusions to many socio-political issues like feminism, substance abuse, and the LBGT community. "Deceptacon" was originally released in Le Tigre's self titled album in 1999.

Aerobicon

The dance was choreographed by professional dancer Miguel Gutierrez^[1], who performed in the video with musician Howie Rigberg^[2]. The dance was part of a series of duets called "Tandemonium", choreographed by Gutierrez in 2000-2001, that was originally performed onstage at an event in New York City. Writer Laurie Weeks, who had previously interviewed Le Tigre's Kathleen Hannah, saw the performance. Laurie told Kathleen, who invited Miguel and Howie to dance at their show- which they did. Le Tigre loved the dance, and a few months later, the pair danced in Kathleen's tiny attic to film the official Deceptacon video. As of April 2011, the video has received over 2 million views. High quality versions are available on the official Le Tigre website.^[3]

The Costumes

According to Miguel Gutierrez:

It was Howie’s ideas to make the costumes the way we made them. Howie is very creative when it comes to costuming, if you’ve ever seen his “my robot friend” character you’ll know what I’m talking about. I believe we bought the pilot jumpsuits at some thrift store downtown then we met at Howie’s computer programming job where we cut them up and STAPLED the velcro pieces onto the costume. This makes the costume really fucking uncomfortable. For the helmets we took two big bags of cotton balls and covered them in yellow duct tape. And then made the straps with the tape and staples. Again. the gloves are from some weird video game that Howie knew about. And then he got a bunch of l.e.d. lights that he put into the goggles (again, from some army/navy store) and I think we put them somewhere else on us but I don’t remember. The sneakers are from some website where you could get customized sneakers mailed to you. I have all of these fucking costumes in some bag in my apartment somewhere.^[4]

Notable Derivatives

External References

^[1] MiguelGutierrez.org

^[2] My Robot Boyfriend

^[3] Le Tigre – Deceptacon

^[4] MiguelGutierrez.org – Deceptacon