Australia’s first rehearsal

Guy is joined on stage by four backing dancers come backing vocals, two men and two women.The presentation starts with Guy singing the slower, intro part of the song. The Australian delegation, quite rightly, uses alternative camera shots and frames but the basic concept is that, to start with, the stage is quite dark and the focus is on Guy. As he gets into the fast part of the song, horizontally arranged spotlights from the back of the stage light up and we can now see a series of street lamps on stage and on either side of the impression of a moving road that is being shown on the stage floor (the moving road impression is not too dissimilar to the one used for the Netherlands last year). The same setting is repeated for the background and, as a result, the stage looks much deeper with the road seemingly vanishing in the horizon. Guy looks suave in his brimmed hat, blue jacket and light trousers and his vocals sound really good when he is singing – whether this is because Guy is tired or trying to save voice for the final, he often omits singing certain phrases even though he carries on with his choreography. Having said that, he genuinely looks as if he’s having fun on stage; his supporting dancers are doing a great job, too. The stage goes through different colour combinations, there are reds and blues, but it is all executed in a congruent way. There is also extensive use of white spotlights that ties the whole thing together. The presentation finishes in an explosion of yellow light.