Dramatic Changes to Russian Stageshow

The second Russian rehearsals revealed dramatic changes to the Russian Stageshow with the removal of planned steps and a frame. This was explained by Dima's choreographer as follows listen. The Olympic skater Pluschenko described the ice rink they are using listen and compared Eurovision with the Olympics listen.

Stradivarius upstages Dima

In a curious press conference from Russian Singer Dima Bilan the sounds of Vivaldi wafted through the Eurovision Press Centre listen as one of Dima's musicians had brought his antique violin and wanted to demonstrate he could play it. There then followed a strange live version of Dima's song where the violinist seemed to be playing to a different beat if not a different tune altogether while Dima struggled and failed to hold his microphone correctly to get a clear sound listen.

Dima was also joined on the stage by Russian Olympic figure skating champion Eugeni Pluschenko, although his relevance to Eurovision was not explained. The press conference was brought to a close by an even more bizarre version of last year's winning song Molitva listen.