In past posts on Stand-In Central, we’ve covered the Eurovision Song Contest — from the perspective of stand-ins!

In May 2019 was the Eurovision Song Contest, this year held in Tel Aviv, Israel. Once again, stand-ins again took the stage to sing and dance in the setup for the contest, and videos of some of their rehearsals made it online.

The videos below of stand-in rehearsals are usually online only for a short period of time before eventually being taken down.  So make sure you watch them now before they’re gone!

How Eurovision Uses Stand-Ins

According to EurovisionWorld.com, the Eurovision contestants’ delegations send their choreography and other instructions to the producer of the broadcast, who tries to program the cameras and lighting to meet their specifications.

Local music artists act as stand-ins for the actual Eurovision contestants, who in turn perform the songs and choreography in order for the producer to rehearse the show, but also to let the contestants’ merely step in and perform without the need of complicated rehearsals.

As EurovisionWorld.com explains, “It is up to each broadcaster/performer to publish the stand-in rehearsals themselves.” Some of these videos are taken down soon after they make it online. And some of these videos remain! This year, a YouTube channel popped up that appears to be exclusively Eurovision Song Contest stand-in rehearsals.

Stand-In Performances

When it comes to the technical rehearsals, the Eurovision stand-ins give it their all. While they might fake playing the guitar or drums, they still fully commit to singing their songs and performing the choreography, all to help the timing of the camera and lights for the delegations to get good senses of how their final performances will look.

Below are stand-is rehearsals we’ve found for Eurovision 2019.

An unidentified stand-in rehearses Cyprus’s entry, “Replay”:

And here’s another video depicting the stand-in rehearsal:

And another, for insurance:

Croatia’s stand-in rehearsal of the song, “The Dream,” showing how important hitting a mark can be when standing in on a LCD floor or against video panels:

Croatia’s entry can also be found here.

Serbia’s entry, “Kruna,” sung by a stand-in (who might have missed her mark in the center of the hurricane on the LCD floor):

Denmark’s stand-ins sang and danced in their entry, “Love Is Forever”:

Lastly, while this is not video of a stand-in rehearsal from Eurovision 2019, this stand-in recently recounted her time standing in in 2018’s song contest, and included some clips of her stand-in work that year (in Portuguese):

Did you come across other stand-in rehearsal videos for Eurovision 2019? If so, post the links in the comments!