It’s been an action packed first day in the Eurovision arena for the first of the rehearsals, and we’ve been there to cover it all! Each day, we aim to bring an in-depth recap of the happenings of the day, including summaries and thoughts on the rehearsals of each act. Here’s the action from Day 1!
Israel
It’s the marmite of this year’s contest, with some loving it, and some not, and we had put ourselves in the second basket. Despite that, we sat through the rehearsal and was impressive with what we saw, and it wasn’t just us, the entire press centre was keeping a close eye on this one!
Visuals:
This is visually the strangest of the day, but that was to be expected since it’s not exactly the most ‘normal’ of songs. What we didn’t expect was the main props of two cupboards full of waving lucky cats, and despite the fact that we don’t completely understand why they are there, it actually does look pretty funky.
It’s not all cats, we’ve of course got a bit of chicken action, not only in her vocals, but the dancing is also very chicken-like. The backing dancers looked committed to their movements, and it came across well on screen. The angles were all also fairly on point, but always room for improvement.
The other odd thing about this staging was also featuring a special guest on stage, with that being a man with a shirt that says ‘stupid boy’ and yes, it makes sense to the song, but what would make more sense is if Netta is the one dragging the stupid boy across the stage, rather than the other way around! We’ll see in the next rehearsal what this is all about…
Costuming:
Somewhat unexpectedly we’re seeing Netta in a Geisha style outfit. It’s short, and it’s pink, which fits into the stage visuals which are all predominately warm colours. She’s featuring her two hair buns, and she has pink eyeshadow to match the outfit. It’s certainly not the best of the day, but it’s suitable to the performance.
Vocals
This is definitely where the magic happens for Israel, and from the opening moments we hear Netta working the looper, and damn it’s impressive. Although she didn’t move a whole lot on stage, her vocals were really impressive, especially in some of the bigger notes towards the end of the performance. This is definitely a strong performance, and we can see why it’s a favourite.
