Last rehearsals of the day. San Marino and Russia

 We had a quick break to pop over to McDonalds to get something unhealthy to eat. On the way we made sure to ask the security people about what we've all been wondering. And yes, this year it *is* allowed to bring food into the press centre. That should be very handy, considering the food available here isn't very exciting.

Let's see what the last two rehearsals bring us...



Russia

Before the rehearsal

Vocally I'm sure this will be fine. All they have to do is a professional performance and not make it too messy, and it should be all right. Let's see what they've come up with

Rehearsal

So. The performance is basically all based on a project screen behind him. It's a mix of Iceland this year. Sweden last year. And Ukraine 2012. And Ukraine 2008. And Belarus 2007. Imagine all of those mixed together.

Sergey first is on the floor and the screen gives him wings and does a lot of stuff behind him. Then he starts climbing the screen, as there's things sticking out of it. At one moment he got quick high up on it and was lying down on something... but then he fell down, and they cut the live feed. Not sure if he injured himself, but hopefully the fall wasn't too bad.

Let's see how the next run-through go, if they do another one

Here we go again. He seems to be fine. He's wearing pretty plain black clothes.

The screen is white and has black shadows creating wings, and then in the first chorus there's thunder and lighting on the screen. Halfway through the first chorus 4 male dancers appear as well.

The screen ha some sort of invisuble steps that he's climbing around, which gives the illusion that he's walking on blocks and pieces of icebergs and whatnot. And eventually he ends up at the very top, as the screen turns into a sun.
It's really a LOT going on, and it's very hard to describe it all.

And at the very end, his one female backing singer walks out from behind the screen and grabs the sun in her hands.

Yes. I realise this is quite vague. You just have to see it for yourselves eventually.

So, is the staging going to help it win? Well it's certainly a staging that gets noticed. It's impressive, and it's expensive. This performance could either go "Heroes" or it could go "Be My Guest". I really can't tell what it might be. The people who already love Sergey will presumably love this performance as well and think it's the best thing ever, and those who don't like him will think the opposite.





San Marino


Before the rehearsal

This song will obviously depend heavily on the backing vocals. They have long solo parts and are quite prominent in the rest of the song as well, so it'll be important that they are good. Hopefully they are able to sing and dance at the same time. And hopefully they've found a way to stage this to make Serhat actually seem like he belongs on that stage.

Rehearsal

There are five "real" backing singers/dancers. All female, and they carry their part quite well.

The song starts off with the five of them moving seductively on a podium in the back, with Serhat in the front slowly swaying his hips while trying to be seductive as well. Not too successfully.

Serhat is wearing white trousers and a blue jumper. Which is too short so when he lifts his arms we see his belly. Neither his clothes or the outfits of the girls are likely to be the real outfits. The girls are wearing silvery high heels though, which might give an indivation of the colour theme.

They're using a sort of hologram effect here too, to make it seem as if there's a lot of more dancers than there are. But unlike Armenia, it's just images on the LED screen.

The song ends with Serhat throwing his hat (The Serhathat?) into the audience.

Somebody will get rich on ebay.