It’s called “Discobedience” and it’s performed by members of Extinction Rebellion Canberra to bring light to the often distressing topic, says dance leader Gerard de Ruyter, also known as Super Freak.

The 65-year-old climate activist and former public servant said the idea originally came from the Melbourne branch of Extinction Rebellion, which had dancers who decided to choreograph some simple steps to Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees. 

The group then re-wrote the lyrics to relate to the climate crisis, recorded it, and staged a flash mob involving about 3000 people, in the centre of Melbourne in 2019.

Gerard said: “They did a mass tutorial to teach people the steps, so they all danced en masse, and you know, it was a great visual thing, and it was on the news and everything, and then the pandemic came and shut everything down.

“During the pandemic, the Extinction Rebellion International […] saw the video and they thought it’d be a nice, morale-boosting thing, to have a competition in Extinction Rebellion to get people to learn the steps, video themselves while they were all locked up and at home, and post them on the internet.

“I saw that invitation to do that, I thought that’d be a nice thing to do, so I learned the steps and dressed up and got my daughter to video me in the garage and post it up, and you know, it was nice to just be a part of that and see all the people dancing those same steps all around the world.

“After that, I thought it would lend itself to be a really good, ongoing way of attracting eyeballs and, hopefully, you know, people will stop and hear the message as well.”

Gerard, who had been part of Extinction Rebellion Canberra for years before the emergence of Discobedience, put the message out to the group about continuing the dance protest offline, and soon after, rehearsals began.

“We did the first one, and it went really well, we had a lot of fun, there were a lot of cars honking, they liked the outlandish disco gear,” Gerard says. 

“So we kept doing it, and we’ve been doing it once a month now for the past three years.

“We’ve got a solid core of dancers, some come and go.”

Discobedience has since choreographed steps to five more songs, including Night Fever, now Heat Fever; You Should Be Dancing is now You Should Be Marching; Disco Inferno, now Planet Inferno, and they have a dance to Hot Summer Nights. 

Gerard says two of the Discobedience group members are professional singers, and they record the new, climate-centred lyrics. 

“It’s not gonna save the world, but it gets people in a really good mood, and hopefully, open to just a slight reminder that climate change is still happening,” says Gerard. 

“It’s not going to fix everything, but it’s a gentle reminder, and it’s a lovely thing when the cars all get honking as well, and people [are] waving and sometimes passers-by join in dancing.”

Gerard says he sympathises with how the climate crisis has been having a particularly large impact on young Australians, and encourages them to join Discobedience as a way of engaging with activism in a way that is light, and fun.

He says: “Lots of young people have been to protests and marches and things, they have their place, but often it just gets ignored by the media, certainly by politicians, and you don’t see anything changing,” he says.

“We don’t change anything either, but if you want to participate in something that is a really good vibe thing, as well as the marching side of things, then you’ll come away feeling good about life at least.”

Discobedience, Northbourne Avenue and Alinga Street, Civic, on the first Friday of every month, 4.30pm-5.30pm. More from Discobedience Canberra on Facebook.