Welcome back to ESCBubble’s coverage for Eurovision 2021! Rehearsals at the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam kicked off this morning with the seven countries performing in the first half of Semi Final One set to have their 30 minute first rehearsals today.

As always, you can check out our ongoing coverage through both our Live Rehearsal Blog and also rolling  daily updates on our Twitter Account.

If you are avoiding potential rehearsal spoilers then don’t read any further! Semi Final One will take place at 21.00 CET on Tuesday 18th May 2021 with sixteen countries competing for ten qualifying spots for the final.

The penultimate country to rehearse on Day 1 of rehearsals is… North Macedonia!

First Rehearsal

In a song titled “Here I Stand”, perhaps it is appropriate that he is completely alone on the stage, dressed in a black jacket with a long cape-like frill on one side. The performance itself is pretty minimalist for the majority of the 3 minutes. However, he does make good use of some of the technical effects that the Ahoy Arena stage allows.

Firstly, during the first verse & chorus he is interacting with some augmented reality components. It starts appearing like a golden heart on his chest, but then with some choreography he moves the gold ‘dust’ around him, before a big golden backdrop kicks in for the higher parts of the song. The other big moment is when the backing choir kicks in and he stands alone, with his jacket opened revealing a silver-plated top, a bit similar to the one that Dotter wore during her 2020 Melodifestivalen performance of “Bulletproof”. These shine the spotlights which are on him across the stage, before again a golden finish. On the second run-through Vasil did dodge the high note in the song, however this may be a case of saving his vocal for when it counts – next week!

Before Eurovision

Vasil started his Eurovision journey back in 2019, when he was one of Tamara Todevska’s backing singers for her show-stopping performance of “Proud”. She sure made her country proud, getting the nations best ever result and actually going on to win the jury vote in the Grand Finale! A year later, the North Macedonian delegation confirmed that Vasil would be their representative for Rotterdam. Last year, he was set to bring the slick tango production of “You” to Rotterdam.

Following the cancellation of the 2020 contest, broadcaster MRT were silent about their 2021 representative for quite a long time, however earlier this year they confirmed that Vasil would be returning. Back in March, Vasil debuted his song for 2021 “Here I Stand”, a big change to last years song. This year, Vasil is bringing HIS top quality vocals for a musical theatre influenced ballad, with him doing a recent interview with Attitude magazine explaining that the song is about him sharing with the world who he is as a now openly gay man, wanting to be a voice for the LGBTQ+ community. Check out the music video for his competing song here: