Day 3 - Poland, Switzerland and Israel

Tom is doing the main blogging at the moment, so I'll just post some brief comments on the rehearsals I'm seeing.



Israel

Hovi is on stage in a black suit with glittery black gloves and shoes, glittery black shirt and a glittery black microphone stand. He's joined on stage by two acrobats spinning around in a large hoola hoop. Yes, one hoola hoop. They're both inside it. Though at one point the stop spinning and look like they began arguing instead, which is probably not part of the performance.

The stage, of course, has star-themed graphics. There's a big star on the floor surrounding Hovi, and there's stars behind him. The stage is mostly black except for the stars which are in shades of blue. It's a little bit like a darker and prettier version of Chiara's starry sky from 2009.

Vocally he's doing what he should. And the backing vocals are loud and sing well too. We can't actually see them though, as they aren't on the stage. But since there's three people on stage already, I assume it means that he has three backing singers.


Second run. The acrobats once again stop their spinning and look like they're arguing. So it's probably part of the act after all.

Also, Hovi is wearing a lot of make-up. Which is no surprise. But you'd think that someone who wears make-up more or less all the time, would actually make sure to wear good make-up?
On the big screens here we can see every piece of powder and foundation on his face very visibly, and it's all looking quite cakey. Something which hasn't been an issue with any of the previous singers, so it's not just the strong lights. Let's hope they fix that for next tuesday.

Last run-through. Now with pyro. The EXACT SAME PYRO as for Switzerland (i.e. the Running Scared Golden Shower). 

Switzerland

Rykka comes on stage and reveals that today's hair colour is blue. Due to the lights the blue hair most of the time looks dark grey though. They may need to do something about that. Unless they want "Last Of Our Kind" to come across as if it's a song about pensions and euthanasia.

She's completely alone on stage. It would probably have been a good idea to have the backing singers visible somewhere instead, because the stage looks very big and she's looking very small. Although maybe that's the idea, because it sort of almost fits the theme of the song. She also has smoke coming out from the back of her dress. Basically as if she has cigarettes in her bra straps. 

Vocally I would say that she's surprisingly ok though! Even in the last chorus which has a lot of difficult notes.

Last run-through, and she now has pyro as well. The "Running Scared"-kind. It's all looking very nice, and once again she manages to hit all the notes. If they can only dye her hair in a less grey shade of blue, this will all be quite perfect visually.  I would dare to say that this rehearsal really lifted the song quite a lot. It even got an applause in the press centre. Of course, whether it will be enough for a qualification or not is a totally different matter. But at least it seems that it will be presented in a nice way.


Poland

Got to the press centre in time to see the last two run-throughs of Poland.  Michal was in black trousers and a black tank top that revealed that he has quite muscular arms. That could possible be a good idea for the actual performance outfit as well. If you've got arms like that, then why not wear them?