They'll shoot you. That was one of the messages that Julius ruiz (Almería, 1993) received a buzz on social media after dancing at the Madrid Biennial wearing a fur coat. And that is precisely the title she has chosen for a book in which she describes her creative process, as if she could transform the irrational fury of a few into a reflective and informative proposal. She will present it this Thursday. September 10th, at the Cicus in Seville.
“This book wasn’t born out of hatred,” the artist emphasizes. “This book was born out of the need to express in an object who I am and what obsesses me. The title, however, was.” They'll shoot you It's a real threat directed at me because of my work. The phrase hung there, in the air, amidst hundreds of hateful comments, until the journalist Mercedes L. Caballero She underlined it to use as the title of an article in El PaísIn October 2025. It was seeing it there, written and highlighted by her, that made me realize I had to do something with that phrase, that I had to transform it. So yes, of course hate can be transformed into something beautiful. I think that's precisely what it does. flamenco From the beginning of time, right? To transform everything that hurts, everything that kills us inside, into beauty.”
Ruiz could have prepared a choreography to reflect what she felt, but this time her body asked her to write.Writing has always been with me, although perhaps for a long time it has been something more intimate.“Something that belonged only to me,” he explains. “The desire to share it also arises from a vital need to be clearer with the person on the other side. And it is now, as with everything, that time helps me shed certain prejudices about myself, that I dare to share it. To offer a different kind of intimacy than what the flamenco".
“Writing leaves behind an object, something that is nothing more than another part of me, but that you can touch whenever you want, return to, keep,” she adds. “I create, of course, to share it. I think that perhaps, If there was no one sitting opposite, I wouldn't createThat's why I believe in the collective, I believe in the powerful force of what we do, because there's always someone on the other side to tell that I've been through that too, that I'm also obsessed with that, and ultimately, that I also need to be hugged."
"I realized I had to do something with that phrase: 'get shot.' I had to transform it. Yes, of course hatred can be transformed into something beautiful. I think that's precisely what it does." flamenco From the beginning of time, right? To transform everything that hurts, everything that kills us inside, into beauty."
“Who is this Julio Ruiz who dances so as not to kill?”The flamenco dancer wonders, though he asserts that “I’m not used to hatred. What I’ve experienced this past year has made me think a lot, and of course, a part of it stays with me. It would be pointless to say otherwise. Throughout most of my childhood and adolescence, I experienced a lack of understanding: boys and girls who saw a child doing and feeling whatever they pleased. I relate well to that feeling; I know it. But not to hatred. And with everything I’ve experienced recently, I’ve understood that I don’t want to understand hatred. I don’t.”
“But I’ll also tell you one thing: I'm not wearing the victim's suit“That suit doesn’t suit me,” he adds immediately afterward. I embrace hatred, I place it in front of me and look it in the eyesAnd that, curiously, has made me understand others better. And myself too. Now I understand that hatred can also be a creative impulse, something that arises from the darkest and most intimate part of oneself. It would be false to say that I don't experience that feeling too. I think we are all capable of inhabiting very dark places. The difference, perhaps, lies in what we do with all of that.
The general obsession with the limits of flamencoSo, what it is and what it isn't doesn't seem to keep Ruiz up at night. "What do I know? And what do you know? And the other one? And the other one? We don't realize that absolute truth doesn't exist, that the flamenco “It’s as subjective as the eyes that look at it,” he says. “I live the flamenco as a way of understanding myself. For me, it's a language, and I communicate through it as I know how, as I can, and above all, as I feel like. flamenco For me, it's a miracle, something bigger than all of us. I respect it as much as I respect my mother. With her, I have one language, and with you, now that you're interviewing me, I have another. That's why, when I want to speak a language and I have no more words to express myself, what do I do? I look for another way. So I don't say just anything, so my words don't become distorted.
“So what happens when I feel like I’m going to blur the lines of what for me is the flamencoSo I write. In recent years I haven't stopped hearing opinions about my dancing, like the sea crashing against the rocks. With Blue like peach skin (2021) I've come to understand that my dance is also composed of all those opinions I never asked for. All I want is to dance. When I started reading reviews or articles that placed me as a "contemporary dancer", as a "performer", as someone who does something differentI want you to know, dear reader, that I consider myself the most ordinary person in the world. Of course, I'm always trying to create something different, because that's what excites me, but I can never put that label on myself. It's always the other person's eye that labels me, and I value and am thrilled by that. Am I doing something different? Well, we'll see. Only time can give those answers.
In this Seville BiennaleJulio Ruiz will accompany Sara jiménez in its premiere In company, on Tuesday September 29th at the Central Theater“It’s a huge challenge for me,” he admits. “Ever since I was little, I’ve strived to get into a company. I always wanted to know what it was like to be part of something created by someone else. I dreamed of joining the company.” Ballet Flamenco Andalusia or with which in the National Ballet of Spain that profiles like mine would have a place. And although I've been in some more contemporary companies, where I've learned a great deal, the answer was always the same: no. I never had that opportunity. Life taught me that I was the one who had to create my own path, that I was the master of my future and also of my present. And, of course, now I see it and it was quite obvious.”
"How should I know? And what do you know? And the other one? We don't realize that absolute truth doesn't exist, that the flamenco It's as subjective as the eyes that look at it. I live the flamenco as a way of understanding myself. For me, it's a language, and I communicate through it as I know how, as I can, and above all, as I feel like. flamenco For me, it's a miracle, it's something bigger than all of us. I respect it as much as I respect my mother.
Ruiz recalls that “since childhood I had a creative drive, a need to create, to tell stories. And so it was. After creating dozens of shows and having a pretty clear idea of where I wanted to go, it turns out that Just now, when I'm no longer looking to join a company, I receive two offers from two companies premiering at the Biennial. It's curious, isn't it? And there's something even more curious about Sara's proposal. Sara was precisely one of those dancers I saw in other companies, the ones I had always fantasized about being in: Estevez and PañosI used to watch Sara and I always loved seeing her. I admired her even back then. In fact, she's one of the people of my generation I admire most. So imagine what it means to me that now she's the one calling me and telling me she wants my body for her creation.”
Thus, the imminent premiere “has something of a closing of a circle. And for me it has something very special because it involves placing my body once again in a place where it hasn't been for a long time: at the service of another's gaze. I am very used to creating, to deciding, to making mistakes, to taking responsibility for everything that happens on stage. Putting my body at Sara's service is as satisfying as it is bloody. Come on, like love..
Julio Ruiz is also preparing a proposal about his fellow countryman, the writer Agustín Gómez Arcos“One day, one winter, Paula gave me The Carnivorous LambI start reading it and discover that Agustín Gómez Arcos was from Enix, the town I used to go to on Sundays with my parents to eat snails, a few minutes from my hometown, Roquetas de Mar. And then I read that book and I feel like that lamb is burning my hands. It scorched me completely. It shook me to my core.”
“A few months later I went to live in Paris, on a scholarship from the National Dance Center of Paristo create my project TheAnd there I discover that Laura Hojman A documentary about Gómez Arcos premiered. In the following months, I went to Seville, and Paula and Lucía (two of the people who believe in me most) went with me to the cinema to see it. And they both said almost in unison: "You have to do it!" And I left there crying and with a terrible headache. My body was warning me about something. So I did something I had never done before: I sent an email to Laura. Without knowing her at all. I wrote to thank her, to tell her that I wasn't going to stop repeating her name and, above all, that Agustín had to be brought back home. But not just to be read. This time, to be danced." ♦
