In the wake of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, which crowned Portugal as its winner, several stand-in rehearsals that has taken place at the Eurovision venue in Kyiv are being released online today. During those rehearsals, another artist (usually from the host country) stands in for the artist on stage to perform their song, τo make the first test shots as soon as the scene is set.
Let’s have a look to which of these rehearsals are uploaded:
Portugal
When it comes to the winning country, the artist Art Demur standed for Salvador Sobral in its stand-in rehearsal. In a quite simple staging, the only difference that is observed, is that the stage and effects are red during the last chorus.
Here’s the winner Salvador Sobral performing his entry Amar pelos dois:
Azerbaijan
You can also find the video of this year’s Azeri stand-in rehearsal. The young singer Lesya Falina acts in this role, instead of Dihaj. During the stand-in rehearsal, we see that the man above the stairs is not wearing a horse mask, as in the final staging. However, in the beginning he is hiding his face with a black hut. Changes in the camera work are also remarkable, as the man above is throwing a dramatic look to Lesya.
https://youtu.be/8I6wyf9Zjeg
Below you can enjoy the official performance of Dihaj at the IEC:
Belgium
With a voice quite similar to the Belgian’s hopeful Blanche, the singer Nanna Kovalova performed on behalf of her during the stand-in rehearsals. There are no special changes that had been made, as the effects are same to the official performance.
This time though, Nanna is wearing a white dress, instead of Blanche’s totally black one! Here you may watch and compare the two performances:
https://vimeo.com/217743708
Iceland
The artist Sasha Polovynska is in the stand-in role for Iceland’s Svala.
There are minor differences observed between her and Svala’s performance and this mostly comes from the absence of laser machine that provided special effects to her appearance on stage.
https://youtu.be/AqAIg3lTYkY
And here’s the real staging of Iceland at the 1st semi-final:
Norway
The successful participation of Norway donated to country a respectable 10th place. Dima Kotok is standing instead of JOWST on stage, performing his entry Grab the moment. Dima is wearing the same black hut as JOWST.
Many of the strong lights of the performance are absent during the stand-in rehearsal. The more interesting fact is that here there aren’t any electronic or black masks that are hiding the faces of the men behind.
You may check out the performances below (stand-in rehearsal and official performance respectively):
So how do you find the stand-in rehearsals? Could some in your opinion be better than the official appearances of the artists? Which other of these rehearsals would you love to watch?
