News - EDC: Finland decided for Glasgow | Eurovision Song Contest News - 2009 Moscow, Russia 

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Written by

Víctor Hondal

Published

16/Jun at 01:08

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YLE, Life after Helsinki Blog

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Maria Lund and Mikko Ahti, EDC Finland 2008 - © YLE
© YLE

Maria Lund and Mikko Ahti

EDC: Finland decided for Glasgow

Eurovision Dance Contest trophy holders Finland have decided their competing couple for this year's EDC to be held in Glasgow (United Kingdom). Their names are Maria Lund and Mikko Ahti.

After Finland's win last year with Katja Koukkula and Jussi Väänänen, the Nordic country will try to repeat victory on September 6th in Glasgow with Maria Lund and Mikko Ahti, winning couple of Tanssii tähtien kanssa (Dances with stars) competition.

Maria Lund will not be strange to the Eurovision world, since her mother, Tamara Lund, participated at the Finnish national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest Euroviisut back in the 1960s. Maria also has participated in several musical theatre plays such as West side story, Madamme Butterfly or My fair lady, as well as recorded two jazz music albums.

Mikko Ahti is a professional dancer. He has competed at several dance contests representing Finland. He used to dance together with Carina Riikonen, but the couple ended in 2003.


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Vincent Barbarino [38148]
Wed 18 Jun 2008 12:45:20

this contest is a great idea, i would dare to say even better than the E. song contest, since i am a big fan of dancing and dance performances. this show needs a lot of publicity and advertisement though, I am sure there are many peple, even fans of the ESC, who do not know that such a show takes place. I have watched some clips from the contest last year, and I must say that i iked almst all of the dancing performances and i was very glad to see, that the viewers in the venue got very quickly carried away and excited by the performances. the only doubt i have about the greatness of this show is that i very much dubt that a normal viewer can judge the dancers by the right criteria, and he or she will vote according to the appearances of the show. I thin this dance contest needs absolutely a 50 or even 60% expert jury voting if it wants to pay fairness to dancing and of course a lot of publicity. Great idea!!!


Scotland - Europe [26518]
Tue 17 Jun 2008 17:55:24

Is it necessary to put ''Glasgow (United Kingdom)'' in this article? I'm pretty sure people already know where Glasgow is. Would you have put Belgrade (Serbia) for the Eurovision this year?


Jonny K [46883]
Tue 17 Jun 2008 17:34:13

I also thought the Swiss deserved alot better, there were plenty of worse dancers who got points. I also think part of the reason why the Swiss did so badly was because they performed first. If we look at the results, Finland won, and they performed last; Ukraine came second, and they performed last also. Whereas Switzerland came last and opened the show, and generally the countries performing earlier did alot worse, with only Russia & Sweden bucking the trend.
I think in EDC the running order is even more important than in ESC, because it is more difficult for viewers to distinguish the better and worse dancers, so they just vote for the ones they remember which tends to be the later performed ones. :S


Stockholm calling [44413]
Tue 17 Jun 2008 16:57:48

Finn P:

I felt sorry for the Swiss couple too. Denise Biellman injured her shoulder and wasn't able to rehearse for several days prior to the final. Denise is one of the world's best female figure skaters.


Finn P [18662]
Tue 17 Jun 2008 15:16:11

I thought it was a little sad Switzerland ended with no points last year - they were good after all.

But Finland were absolutely deserved winners.. they were really good and only Finland would choose a band reworking Metallica songs into cello instrumentals as their backing music. I got the music directly afterwards! Theyre probably one of the coolest countries on earth :)P.


Mile J. [46134]
Tue 17 Jun 2008 14:25:38

Last year while I was watching edc I said, Finland will win this thing...and I had right...By some way they were different...special...and becouse of it they won with reason...This year they have also good chance of winning


Jonny K [46883]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 21:53:04

Stockholm calling:

Yeah, i'll try and .look for their first albums! I think i'm an ark addict now!!! :)




Stockholm calling [44413]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 21:52:24

Jonny K:
lol, so am I :)


Stockholm calling [44413]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 21:45:44

Jonny K:

I'm so glad you like it :) "Clamour for glamour" is great, it was one of their hit singles. All their albums are superb I think and quite different. I hope you'll find their 1st and 2nd albums too, "We are The Ark" and "In lust we trust".


Jonny K [46883]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 20:23:32

Stockholm Calling:

hehe lol!!! I just thought i would let you know that i've managed to get "state of the ark" and it is AMAZING!!! I think "clamour for glamour" is my favourite song . . . . . . .ever!!! :) :D


Stockholm calling [44413]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 18:31:26

Jonny K:

Oh yeah! His accent is very British :)


Jonny K [46883]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 18:26:25

Stockholm calling:

hehe do you like his "cute" accent then??!!!! lol! :)


Stockholm calling [44413]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 18:23:07

Jonny K:

Yes, Tony Irving is a professional dancer and instructor and he's currently living in Sweden. He speaks rather good Swedish with a cute accent :)


Jonny K [46883]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 17:50:18

Stockholm calling:

You had a British commentator, how cool!!! One our commentators was Italian!! :P


Stockholm calling [44413]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 17:25:19

I really liked the Finnish couple last year. Their dance routine looked great to me :) Our (British) expert commentator also said that they deserved to win.
I can't understand why the UK didn't score better :( They were absolutely great too, real pros.

It seems that Sweden will send a couple from Let's Dance (the Swedish equivalent to Strictly come dancing) this year too, probably the runners-up.


Jonny K [46883]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 17:11:54

I'm glad Finland won last year, they deserved it :), although the UK deserved higher :(


Vincent Barbarino [38148]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 15:03:25

i love dance and dancing also and the idea of a EDC drives me really mad. But why does it enjoy such low popularity? even lower than the JESC? I think this contest lacks of publicity. I do not even nw where I can eatch the show, what kind of voting system is applied. A kind request to this very web site: please enlighten us on this very exciting contest. We need some information and please make some publicity for the participants, e.t.c.


Dawid Sz. [45021]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 13:28:38

i agree :( bad news :(


Sanio Silva [39493]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 12:49:19

very late news :S


Fan since 1976 [31010]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 11:40:21

Germany has withdrawn and the EDC won't be shown on TV also. :-(


AngeL oF dOubT. [37157]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 10:03:39

Again, an interesant entry for Finland. :)


Glen Bartlett [22315]
Mon 16 Jun 2008 08:43:47

It's good that other countries dont know how good/bad other couples are, because some viewers like to make their decision in advance.
And the venue looks fantastic :)


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