In YouTube Right Now, the Daily Dot looks at videos that catch our eyes, push our buttons, or move the dials—and that you’ve just got to watch. Right now.
Long-sleeved pink unitards, knee-high socks, and more than a little gender-bending add up to a festive Christmas indeed.
In the latest YouTube video that’s sure to haunt our holiday dreams, Alexandra Karigan and Zac Hammer dance the living bejeezus out of Mariah Carey’s version of “All I Want for Christmas.” Their moves might seem nicked from artists ranging from Beyoncé to Borat to Busby Berkeley—might, that is, if the pair didn’t make them so wholly original.
The dance video is done in classic lip-dub style—a single take, albeit with some Cloverfield-esque rattling as the dancers whirl around the camera. The clip’s rough patches just add to its infectious charm, though.
There’s one violation of the lip-dub format’s sacred single-take rule—the pair dip down and rise up in completely different getups, Hammer in a fur-lined, hooded parka, and Karigan decked out as a drag king with cop sunglasses and a penciled-in mustache.
“You guys are brilliant!” wrote shnoobert81 in a comment. “Your Christmas video makes me insanely happy and I’m now Tumblr-ing about it.”
While their YouTube channel, TheYahsInitiative, seems devoted to frivolous fun along these lines, the two strike me as serious dance artists. They met at Southern Methodist University, where Hammer graduated in 2007, according to a resume posted online.
Hammer and Karigan, who are now roommates in New York, started doing the videos in lieu of Christmas cards “just to make our friends laugh,” he told me. The furry-parka and drag-king outfits are recurring characters who have appeared in several past videos.
Here’s a routine they choreographed together: