THIS YEAR'S ENTRY
Following the
recent Eurovision victories of Turkey, Greece
and Finland, only a handful of countries have
entered the Eurovision Song Contest for over
twntry years, without gaining a victory;
Portugal Malta and Cyprus. The last three years
have been especially disappointing for the
Cypriots with relegation and two failures to
qualify from the semi-final.
This year
Cypriot television decided to go back to a
national final to select its entry for Belgrade.
The selection was held on January 12th in
Nicosiaand the winner was chosen by televoting
(60% weighting) and a jury (40% weighting). Nine
of the ten songs were in English, but the winner
was the one remaining song, sung in Greek;
"Femme Fatale" sung by Evdokia Kadi.
This makes it the first Eurovision song
completley n the Greek in almost a decade.
Evdokia Kadi
was born in Nicosia in 1981 and she started
singing professionally in 2001, in the student
café of the University of Cyprus. She has taken
part in many different concerts in Cyprus and
abroad, alongside several Greek and Cypriot
singers and musicians.
In 2006
Evdokia joined the Cypriot broadcaster CyBC's
Folk Orchestra. As she gets ready for her
Eurovision performance Evdokia is also currently
preparing tracks for her first solo album, which
is due for release
this summer.
Despite facing
competition from better know singers, Evdokia won
the Cypriot national selection albeit by a narrow
margin, and she will take her charismatic
performance of "Femme Fatale" to the Eurovision
Song Contest stage in Belgrade.
The
songwriters behind this year's Cypriot entry are
brothers Nicos and Vangelis Evaggelou. Composer
Nicos studied at the University of Central
Florida and was a member of the Jazz Band at
Valencia College Orlando. He wrote the score for
two short films and a theatrical production in
the USA. Later he studied Contemporary Classical
Music Composition at Columbia College Chicago
under the tutelage of Dr. Gustavo Leone. Nicos
has worked with the Cyprus Philharmonic
Orchestra, and also for several television stations and nightclubs as a composer,
an arranger and a pianist. He has previously participated at the Cypriot
Eurovision selection back in 2004 when
"Analyse Your Love" performed by Georgia Panayiotou came second to
"Stronger Every Minute".
The lyricist
of "Femme Fatale" is Vangelis
Evaggelou. Like his brother, he studied at the
University of Central Florida and Vangelis
earned his Bachelors in Fine Arts/Animation and
his Masters in Art Education. He returned to
Cyprus in 2000 and since then has been working
at different colleges, private and public
schools as a teacher of art and art history.
Vangelis enjoys working with different
theatrical groups as a set designer, illustrates
books and writes lyrics. Like his brother, he
will be making his Eurovision debut in Belgrade.
After the
disappointment of the last few years, the level
of expectation around this year's Cypriot entry
is a lot lower than before. The preview video of
the entry is simply the performance in the
national final, with some studio shots woven in
at random and unlike previous entrants Evdokia
has not promoted her entry outside Cyprus, with
the exception of a guest spot at the Greek
national final.
Evdokia will
have four male dancers on stage with her in
Belgrade and the song has be re-arranged for the
Eurovision stage it remains one of the
bookmakers' outsiders to qualify from the second
semi-final, although it has done somewhat better in some
internet fan polls.
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