Friday evening rehearsals

Still a bit goosbumpy after seeing Moldova in the hall, but anyway...

IRELAND
Those of you who will be seated close to the catwalk are in for a treat, as the dancers will be bodhráning right above you throughout the intro and first verse, much of this isn't caught on camera unfortunately.

Not much has changed from their first rehearsals - a lot of choreography involving the dancers on the drums (looks great), the actual drummer playing about with the red-illuminated hive of bombos (fits the act), and very shiny people - the dancers' oily torsos and Ryan's jacket (not sure about this...). The biggest problem here remains the backing singers being too loud in the mix. But we gave up on them fixing this because they seem to think it's a good idea.

A bit of pyro towards the end now (a smidge of fireworks blowing up from behind and then in front of them), not really helping it, but it's nice to see a bit of yellow among all this black and red I suppose.

CYPRUS
Again, not much to say about this one. The intro with the spotlight behind Despoyna looks nice, and the Sara Varga split screen thing works well. And I like her shiny earrings. And with full makeup now, some viewers might wonder what the Slovenian singer is doing on stage again.

BELGIUM
A very dark setting, combined with Roberto's black suit and the dancers' black dresses, there's a lot of floating heads going on. He sings well and the sound mix is great. The press area chuckled when the dancers were wriggling about with their hands fixed on their crotches (or was it an "I'm pregnant" dance?), but otherwise the choreography comes across fine. And there was the mandatory DUBSTEP moment during the DUBSTEP:

This song feels very much at home in this MF semi arena, but Roberto's terrified child look (whether he's actually terrified or just naturally looking like this) remains its biggest problem, and this one's still very hard to call.

SERBIA
We didn't see the first runthrough, just the photo of the swirly coloured butterfly on screens. Not much different from what Moje3 looked like on Tuesday when I think of it...

We see them now, and yes, they look the same. It sounds great, but the cameras are still quite a mess, as well as the lighting, with some of them that are supposed to be in focus left in the dark. This needs a lot of work, and time is running out... We'll probably still see this on Saturday, but I wouldn't be saying this if this wasn't Serbia and sung last in a small semi. Hmm.