Giulio Hoxhallari: ‘Dance should be about human-to-human’

The studio below

On the ground floor of the building where Giulio grew up in his native town of Varazze (Italy), there was a dance studio. “The teachers were a mother and daughter and they did classes in Hip Hop and Modern Dance”, Giulio explains. “When I was, say, eight or nine, I was really struck with Michael Jackson. I was trying to imitate him all the time and of course I also heard the music from the studio below. It was my mother who suggested I take dance classes. Apparently I had a natural feeling for the idiom.” It was the start of Giulio’s career as a dancer. Lessons became more serious and he started to take part in competitions, battles, and dance festivals. In 2016 he moved to Milan where he studied at the Modulo Academy and at DanceHaus Susanna Beltrami, which enriched his technique and scope. He did some television projects with the Modulo Academy – and then came Notre Dame. Giulio was, and still is, impressed by the artistic depth of the production: “Notre Dame is very much art.”

Zino Schat

“For dancers of my genre, it is hard to find work in Italy”, Giulio says. “The Italian dance world is rather conservative, which is why many Italian contemporary and urban dancers go abroad. I also felt there would be more opportunities for me outside Italy. When I met Zino Schat, I immediately knew that he would be a good person to research with. In Italy, the attitude is like ‘do it again, again, again’. Zino is more conceptual in a very good way. I like to grow with the piece. It’s more fruitful to have a break and think about what you’re doing.” The first thing Giulio did with Zino was Exit Sign (2024). He subsequently took part in Schat’s Whispering a Prayer, touring the Netherlands in 2024–’25. “Zino likes to break boundaries, make discoveries. I like that as well. Dance should be about human-to-human and about today.”

ISH Dance Collective

Giulio is also a member of ISH Dance Collective, a company that aims at bringing urban street styles to the theatre. At ISH, Giulio worked with choreographer Denden Karadeniz for the production Home, in which four dancers, two men and two women, use the furniture (a sofa, basically), doors and windows of a living-room setting to explore interaction and connectedness. Giulio’s summary of the piece: “In that room you find four different problems.” Although modestly described by Giulio as ‘the sofa thing’, Home received much praise for its breathtaking movement and emotional depth. Exit Sign, Whispering a Prayer and Home are excellent examples of how immensely demanding urban styles can be. “I’m human, so sometimes I’m lazy”, Giulio says with a smile. “But I try to take good care of my body, to sleep well. Sometimes I go to the gym to do calisthenics. That’s not about dance, it’s for your body, it’s about maintenance.”

Future

“Me and my partner, Evelyn Hutchings, are currently working on a duet we would like to bring to the stage at some point”, Giulio says. If he won the Piket Art Prize in his category, he would very much like to use the money to develop the work and to finance production. The latter naturally involves more than two dancers – think musicians, technicians, scenery. But he would also take the opportunity to travel, to take part in competitions, and to audition internationally. The prize would expand his radius of action. Despite the plans for the duet, he is not quite ready yet to call himself a choreographer. He feels that he needs time to mature. “I am twenty-eight now and still very much enjoy being a dancer. I would like to fulfill my dreams as a performer. I would like to travel in order to give and to show what I have, the mentality of my dance.”

Text: Anna Beerens
Photo: juv