(Do you see what I did there? – do you!)
Jurijus was missing something. Various answers from our table ranged from a guitar to a better song. Both completely valid.
The performance needed something to connect to the audience. Jurijus (on his own) was not strong enough to carry this through to qualification, for two reasons.
Firstly, as mentioned, he doesn’t connect. Secondly, the staging stayed very neutral. Nothing on the background gave a hint of anything about the song, and there was no emoting going on.
The problem comes with the fact that ‘Run with the lions’ lacks a built-in highlight moment, so there’s no chance for anyone to do anything – lighting or staging wise.
It was three minutes of “meh” …. alright, but alright doesn’t get anyone voting.
Qualifying: NO