Rehearsal

Jurij's rehearsal is the same as his first rehearsal was. The performance relays on his charisma, which he has in large amounts. He's basically carrying the entire performance on his back. He tries one rehearsal with a simple look of a black t-shirt. Jurij gives good vocals, but unlike many performances in this semi-final, the Lithuanian once doesn't have any attention grabbers factors. Admirable, but might be risky.

Michela's second rehearsal seems to be not as strong as the first one. She wears her hair down and it seems even some of the choreography has changed. She's not focused throughout the entire rehearsal. In the 2nd and 3rd attempt, it seems to get better and better, and Michela delivers the vocals as she knows. We see the on-screen graphics they're gonna use, like small fishes when the video art shows the underwater and virtual rain when Michela sings she can "change like the weather".

Roko is opening the 7th day of rehearsals. I've just noticed that the staging tells a story of rising from the depth of earth (Hell?) to Heaven. The camera shakes to resemble an earthquake as Roko arises and accent from the fiery hell to the sky, where he meets the two angels/dancers who give him wing. This has a very strong Christian motive, and I'm sure televoters will have it in their top 10 in the semi-final.

Germany's S!sters are the last act to go on stage for today. Carlotta and Laurita walking towards each other on the catwalk and meet each other on the 2nd chorus. Their faces appear on the video art and later words like "Sorry" and "Respect" show up on it. The camera work circling them, falling at one point, zoom in on them and then take a shot at the audience. On the last chorus, there are different images of sisters on the screen. There are some things to work on regarding the camera work, the staging seems to be not tight enough.

That's it, we saw all 41 acts rehearse on stage at least once. Can you spot the winner?

It's Great Britain now! Michael Rice, the young guy with the big voice, goes now on stage. The stage is filled with smoke and Michael wears black, including a leather jacket. The image is in monochrome in the first part of the performance. The video art shows falling stars. The color comes in and the video art changes to images of galaxies in space (Slovenia and Australia had something similar). Michael is joined at the last part of the song by his backing singers, all dressed in white. They all create a circle. I would sadly say it is one of the most ineffective stages we saw this year.

Mahmood took the stage for the first time. With him 3 dancers. The colors on the screen and stage are mostly dark blue and red. The backdrop shows images of people from the video clip, including the child. Some sentences from the song appear in English at the backdrop (hey, it worked for them last year). Mahmood wears a nude colored buttoned-up shirt with some print on it. His dynamics with the dancers are good, but it's not the most effective stage I've seen this year. Oh, and there's an image of burning money and the words "Money Can't Buy You Love". It's a strong message that can speak to a lot of people, but how will European react to Urban trap?

Miki wears black fitted shirt and pants. On the stage, a house like the construction of 6 rooms, spread on 2 floors. Miki dances around with 4 dancers and has 1 backing vocalist. The video art shows colorful images, fingerprints, triangles and more. A big robot tries to shake the house down, with Miki and the dancers in it. Miki looks amazing and sounds good, the colorfulness is created joy, but the robot is superfluous in my opinion.

The rehearsal starts with a shot on Bilal's face wearing a mask. It screens different faces on the mask. Bilal steps to the center stage (without the mask by now) and so does a "real size" dancer, who gets a lot of applause from the press. A second dancer joins in later. Bilal is dancing with them separately and then together. The video art colors are purple and gold, which goes along great with Bilal and co's white outfit. The beat of the new arrangement is smart, cause it made for a "show". Bilal is not accurate all of the time vocally but sounds fair throughout most of the performance.