Dancing Theresa May / Maybot

About

Dancing Theresa May, also known as the Maybot Dance, refers to a clip of England Prime Minister Theresa May dancing with South African children while on a trip to the country to discuss trade and economic ties. The stilted, awkward nature of May's dance led to mockery and remix videos of the clip.

Origin

On August 28th, 2018, Prime Minister May was filmed dancing with schoolchildren of ID Mkhize High School in Cape Town, South Africa. Video of the moment was tweeted by @DIRCO_ZA (shown below).

Spread

After the video was posted, Twitter users began joking about it by either pairing it with humorous captions or remixing the clip with different music. Of the former, some popular tweets include jokes by @AntC1 that gained over 80 retweets and 470 likes (shown below, left) and a joke by @chakraborrty that gained over 130 retweets and 420 likes (shown below, right).

Other popular parodies involved setting the footage to different music. User @OFalafel set the footage to dubstep music, gaining over 360 retweets and 680 likes (shown below, top). User @ianbrannan set May's dancing to artist Fatman Scoop, gaining over 130 retweets and 290 likes (shown below, bottom).

A common strand of jokes about the video called the dance the "Maybot,"^[4][5] a portmanteau of "May" and "Robot." Jokes about the dance were covered by Twitter Moments,^[1] News18,^[2] The Guardian,^[3] and more.

CPC Dance

On October 2nd, 2018, at the United Kingdom's Conservative Party Conference, Prime Minister Theresa May walked on stage to the ABBA song "Dancing Queen." As she crossed the stage, she danced briefly to the song, referencing the meme of her dancing.

That day, Reuters posted the video of the dance to Twitter. The post received more than 630 retweets and 1,600 likes in 24 hours (shown below).

Following the post, people on Twitter joked about the dance, either because they enjoyed May's dance or because they did not like it (examples below).

That day, Twitter^[6] published a Moments page about the dance.

Image Macros

Within a month of the video's posting, people began meme-ing the dance, adding labels and captions that recontextualize her enthusiasm and mock the stereotype that white people are poor dancers. On October 28th, Redditor ^[9] dark_nehcard posted an image macro in the /r/TheresaMayMemes subreddit (shown below, left).

The following day, on October 29th, 2018, Redditor wesley_hieu used the image to joke about the British Empire trading opium in China. The post received more than 1,400 points (99% upvoted) in two days.

On October 30th, Redditor^[10] Behemothism posted a variation that used the image as the punchline to the following caption: "House: Is 200 years old, haunted, nobody comes out alive, blood on the walls." The image of May is then used to represent "White People." The post received more than 20,000 (94% upvoted) and 160 points in 24 hours (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References