From dancing Czechs to fierce Latvians!

The pretty Tereza Kerndlova from the Czech Republic had the hard task of rehearsing first this morning, but everything was fantastic during her performances of Have Some Fun! The Czechs obviously think that silver is the key to succeed this year as everyone with dressed in this colour: Tereza is wearing a short sexy dress just as her backing singers and her dancers wear silver hotpants and even their huge winged heart and the turntable on stage are in silver! The only exception is the DJ using the turntable - he is in white. The vocals were flawless on all tries today and the dance routine worked really well with the contemporary Have Some Fun. The song wouldn't be out of place in any European club. The Czech team used great amounts of fire and pyrotechnics in their rehearsal this morning but the LED projections were pretty minimalistic, consisting of moving yellow elements on a dark ground. Asked by the press what the Czech team had been up to the last days, Tereza Kerndlova answered that they went on a boat trip and that they enjoyed it a lot. Tereza also revealed that the Eurovision version of Have Some Fun was recorded in Belgium.  

Ruslan Alehno, the handsome singer from Belarus, had decided to completely re-arrange his song Hasta La Vista after the Belarusian final in January. Had it been very pop-oriented before, Ruslan thought that it would be wiser to bring more rock into the song. This change was definitely for the better, as the song has become extremely catchy now! The Belarussian singer is joined by four female dancers and one backing singer at the back part of the stage. The performance also includes five lit baubles which are moved around on the stage during the performance. The beginning of the song is very impressive as Ruslan starts off in almost complete darkness being surrounded by the dancers which are grouped around the central bauble. The end of the performance is equally interesting as the four dancers display a gigantic letter R. Vocally, everything went smoothly, too, so right now, there is no reason to believe why Belarus shouldn't qualify for the final for the second time in a row! The Belarusian team said that winning the Junior Eurovision Song Contest twice gave a lot of confidence to them and as a surprise guest, the winner of the 2007 edition of the Junior contest, Alexey Zhigalkovich, turned up at the press conference and sang his winning song together with Ruslan Alehno!

Third up today were Latvia's representatives Pirates Of The Sea performing their catchy, up-tempo song Wolves of the Sea. The wonderful thing about this performance is the fact that the Latvian pirates are having such a good time on stage. This also reflects on the success of the rehearsal which went rather smoothly today at the Belgrade Arena. The Latvians were of course wearing their pirate outfits, and now it seems like that just a few arrangements need to be made for the upcoming dress rehearsals which will start on Wednesday for the participants of the second semi-final. A special technical feature was tried out during Wolves of the Sea: When one of the female singers looked through a telescope, a small display on the top right side of the screen showed what she infact saw. On the large LED screen in the background large sharks swam around. At the press conference after the rehearsal, the Latvian participants expressed their content with today's rehearsal, and unlike other participants they stood up all of the time answering the questions. Last year's Latvian representative and member of Pirates Of The Sea Roberto Meloni and female singer Aleksandra Kurusova danced in front of the clapping fans and the press.