Julia Speisser Fullaccount — one of the magical “wolves” who danced with Azerbaijan’s Elnur Huseynov at Eurovision 2015 — is a woman in demand. She’s already performed in countless venues around the world, and this weekend she wrote another line on her growing CV by performing with Australian superstar Sia on the UK’s X Factor. Congrats, girl!
Julia, who we met with Elnur on this year’s Eurovision Red Carpet, gave a fierce performance inside a glass cage while Sia stood on top (wearing a huge wig and a giant bow) and sang her new single “Alive”. At the end of the performance Sia thanked the audience before saying, “And thank you to Julia the dancer downstairs!” She couldn’t have done it without you, Jules! But who cares about Sia? Just take a look at Julia’s moves and the sophistication of her performance coordinating with the projections. As we saw in Vienna, this girl is gold.
The “Alive” choreography doesn’t have much to do with that of “Hour of The Wolf” and Julia seems to have been styled to resemble Maddie Ziegler (the girl from the “Chandelier” and “Elastic Heart” videos). But we do see a few similarities between this and acts we have seen at Eurovision.
For instance, that cage is very Azerbaijan 2013. It’s almost as if Sia’s people learned that Julia danced for the Azeris, Googled Azerbaijan to figure out where it was, and then discovered Farid’s performance. (Though obvs they did not carbon copy it like certain producers in China).
FARID MAMMADOV’S GLASS BOX IN MALMÖ
And let us not forget…
ERIC SAADE BREAKING A GLASS BOX IN DÜSSELDORF
Sia and Eurovision
Working with Julia doesn’t mark the first time Sia has had a brush with Eurovision. Ahead of Eurovision 2015 the Aussie praised Loïc Nottet’s version of “Chandelier”. And more recently, she collaborated with Italy’s Eurovision 2013 singer Marco Mengoni on his new track “Rock Bottom”.
Less concrete are the associations we impose on her. Her line ‘I’m Aliiiiiiiive’ line smacks of Albania’s Elhaida Dani and Slovakia’s TWiiNS. And she has been a regular in all of our Australia wishlists for Eurovision. With the Aussies coming back in 2016, we’re poking SBS directly: select Sia internally and put Julia in a giant cage! There’s your winner.
How much have you enjoyed Julia and Sia’s performance? Would you like to see this tandem at Eurovision? Tell us below!
@criticca – UK X Factor is ITV , a completely different broadcasting station to BBC, so the comparison is irrelevant. She was never employed by the BBC and she is not singing so really it has no relevance to the BBC’s Eurovision selection.
They could afford to get her on UK X-Factor but not for UK’s Eurovision team? BBC better sort their @#$! together now.
Of course you can see her! The whole light box dance was the crux of the performances. As with all Sia’s performances, she gives focuses to another dancer to take the attention away from herself. That’s like saying you can’t see Maddie in the Chandelier performances lol.
Thanks for sharing, as many people would have missed the Eurovision link to the entry, including myself and it is interesting to know what the stage dancers are doing nowadays as well as the singers.
I saw it live and you could barely see her so its not really a big deal