Matt Monro Forum

Anyone watch the Eurovision Dance Contest tonight on BBC1?
I found it quite entertaining and our couple danced well. As with the Eurovision Song Contest though, most countries were very biased and voted for their neighbours.
At least we didn't come last, and I'm quite pleased to say I voted for the eventual winners, Poland.
I expect they got quite a number of votes from the U.K as we now have such a large Polish community.
Marian

Yes we watched it Marian and were quite impressed with the amateurs of these performers, but like our "Strictly Come Dancing" shows It's practice and more practice.
The judges weren't very generous with our couple, but what do they know.
Poland deserved to win. Azerbaijan trying their best to gain points with their engagement trash. Well in our view, it wasn't their dancing that was going to get them the top marks, but it was a good try.

Didn't see the contest as we were at a party, but I would be interested to see how many points that Russia got after recent events in Georgia!

These were the results Michael. The first number of points is is the judges vote and the second from the viewers.
As you see Russia did well.

Draw Country Competing dancers Dance styles Rank Points
1 Sweden Danny Saucedo & Jeanette Carlsson [6] Cha-Cha 12 38
2 Austria Dorian Steidl & Nicole Kuntner[7] Slowfox/Jive 13 29
3 Denmark Patrick Spiegelberg & Katja Svensson [8] Samba/Tango/Paso Doble/Jazz Dance 6 102
4 Azerbaijan Eldar Dzhafarov & Anna Sazhina [9] Paso Doble/Rumba/Tango/Azeri Folk Dance 5 106
5 Ireland Gavin Ó Fearraigh & Dearbhla Lennon [10] Paso Doble/Rumba/Hard Shoe Irish Dance 11 40
6 Finland Maria Lund & Mikko Ahti [11] Tango 10 44
7 Netherlands Thomas Berge & Roemjana De Haan [12] Rumba/Show Dance 14 1
8 Lithuania Karina Krysko & Saulius Skambinas [13] Rumba/Cha-Cha/Acrobatic Elements 4 110
9 United Kingdom Louisa Lytton & Vincent Simone [14] Paso Doble/Jive/Tango 9 47
10 Russia Tatiana Navka & Alexander Litvinenko [15] Cha-Cha/Samba/Rumba/Paso Doble/Russian Folk Dance 2 121
11 Greece Jason Roditis & Tonja Kosovich [16] Latin dances 7 72
12 Portugal Raquel Tavares & João Tiago [17] Rumba/Tango 8 61
13 Poland Edyta Herbuś & Marcin Mroczek [18] Rumba/Cha-Cha/Jazz Dance 1 154
14 Ukraine Lilia Podkopayeva & Sergey Kostetskiy [19] Jive/Ukrainian Folk Dance/Rock'n'Roll 3 119


Scoreboard
It is worth noting that, had the judges not been introduced (and thus only the televote been used), Poland would still have won the competition by 31 points.


Marian

Ever efficient eh Marian! Thanks for that. Can I just check that the numbers in the brackets are the judges scores, and then the places followed by televote scores appear at the end? If so, then the judges opinion and the viewers do seem to be pretty similar. Which is nice! I think they are working on something similar for the Song Contest as well.

I'm not too sure about the numbers in the brackets Michael.
Anyway, here are some more statistics, perhaps you will be able to work out which is which score.

Results without the jury

* 1st Poland - 134
* 2nd Ukraine - 103
* 3rd Russia - 97
* 4th Azerbaijan - 78
* 4th Lithuania - 78
* 6th Portugal - 61
* 7th Denmark - 54
* 8th Ireland - 40
* 9th United Kingdom - 39
* 10th Sweden - 34
* 11th Finland - 32
* 11th Greece - 32
* 13th Austria - 29
* 14th Netherlands - 1
Controversy

Azerbaijan and Greece announced professional dance couples as their representatives at the Eurovision Dance Contest 2008. According to the regulations of the contest [20], professional couples were not allowed to take part in the competition. The EBU specified that the couple had to be composed of one professional (defined as a dancer who earns his or her living through dance and dance-related activities), and one non-professional known in a field other than dance. The non-professional was not required to be a celebrity, as long as he or she was known in his field, and it was also not a requirement that the non-professional had no dance experience. Since the representatives for Azerbaijan and Greece both consisted of two professional dancers, however, it is not clear why their entries were considered valid.

Marian

Well, it certainly did not seem to help Greece !!!

Thanks for all that information Marian-made interesting reading--even though I did not see it.

I have now found the actual Jury results Michael, which were as follows..

SWEDEN 4
AUSTRIA 0
DENMARK 48
AZERBAIJAN 28
IRELAND 0
FINLAND 12
NETHERLANDS 0
LITHUANIA 32
UNITED KINGDOM 8
RUSSIA 24
GREECE 40
PORTUGAL 0
POLAND 20
UKRAINE 16

The United Kingdom actually drew with Finland (last year's winners) after the judges had voted, with 9 points each, but as ties were not allowed, the senior judge from Singapore, had to decide which couple got the higher position, and she chose Finland. There were lots of boos from the fantastic Glasgow crowd! It was a magnificent venue too.

Marian

Thanks for all that detail Marian - its very interesting to see how the judges voted because......as of 2009, there will be a similar system for the Final of the Eurovision Song Contest! Yes, the much loved juries will be making a return to add some balance to the voting

It'll be interesting to see if the U.K. gets a fairer result with a different voting system anyway Michael.
Marian

I am just wondering how it will work-I cannot remember it from last time they did it.