Constandinos Tsindas offers comments on a childhood passion
It doesn’t really matter if Cyprus will make it through to Saturday’s 70th Eurovision Grand Final or not-well it does, but you know what I mean.
I mean A+ for dancing in front of Europe like you were enjoying a night with friends at a busy wedding.
The contest, after all, remains supremely unpredictable, with seemingly spotless entries failing to progress in the spring music festival’s recent past, a multi million TV audience celebration of European unity-that was once upon a time if you ask many, before it went hesitantly and awkwardly political.
But one thing was predictable in tonight’s 2nd semifinal when it came to our national effort- and that was Antigoni’s fiery performance, an explosion of that unmistakable timeless good side of Cypriot passion that never grows old, but has sadly faded of late.
With Jalla, ‘I want more’, in Cypriot dialect, Antigoni, taking up the baton from her dynamic mum Tonia Buxton, a TV chef host of international acclaim, lit up the stage with Mediterranean panache and celebrated her roots with undeniable joy.
She was supported by overtones of Greek Syrtaki and Middle Eastern tsifteteli, enriched with modern dance moves that have already gone viral on tik tok and will certainly lift up thousands at night clubs.
She did have some special moves, to be sure, which woke up the audience of Wiener Stadthalle to the light (and real fire) of the blinding, sizzling Cyprus summer, the aura of a once multicultural north London and the smile of a woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t care what small and bitter society ‘commentators’ think of her.
If that isn’t a pertinent message of authenticity in a fake news world, ‘dancing on the table of our lives’, I simply don’t know what is.
It was indeed a ‘melody of the sun’, coupled with that old style plate breaking. Safely.
We’re happy Antigoni. You put the Cypriot dialect on the map. And gave many Cypriots a good shove, reminding them of their greatest assets. Passion and work ethic. Own it.
After all, everyone danced to it.
They might say you copied Shakira or your song is too ‘eastern’, but culture has no ethnicity or a single face. So don’t sweat it.
15 countries were set to present their entries tonight, with ten going through to the final.