FSC Spin-Off August 2021: Best of former FSC-entrants - Madagascar

## The Host Country

**The Republic of Madagascar** is an island state located in the Indian Ocean, around 400 kilometers from the coast of Mozambique. With its 590,000 km², the main island, also called Madagascar, is the fourth largest island on earth. Though it's hard to estimate the exact amount of inhabitants in the country, there are slightly less than 30 million people.

Before the arrival of humans about 1,800 years ago, there were many large and unusual animals living there, descended from species that were originally present when Madagascar became an island or later crossed the sea to Madagascar. Ecological niches are filled by animals with a different history from those on the African continent, often leading to convergent evolution. A large proportion of these endemic Malagasy animals have died after the arrival of humans, particularly megafauna.

Despite this and massive deforestation, Madagascar is still home to an incredible amount of wildlife, the vast majority of which is unique in the world. That makes Madagascar a primary destination for ecotourism with more than 50 national parks and other protected reserves.

## The Venue

Our Host venue is the Malagasy national stadium in the capital Antananarivo: **Mahamasina Municipal Stadium**. It’s a multi-purpose stadium used for many concerts. The main events at the stadium, however, are football and rugby matches, and all home games are played here. The max capacity of the stadium is 40,880 for such matches.

Sadly, the stadium is most renown for the many deaths by stamping which has happened nearly every year recently

## The Hosts

To celebrate FSC’s 150th anniversary three former winners of “A Night With The Stars” have agreed to host the show: **Calum Scott, Imelda May and Taras Topolya**.

**Calum Scott** is a famous British singer who rose to fame in 2015 when he finished 6th in “Britain’s Got Talent” and had a major hit in the country in 2016 with his cover of Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own”. In 2017 he once again went to the top of the charts with “You Are The Reason” which he did both as a duet with former X Factor winner Leona Lewis and as a solo. The latter ended up winning FSC #109 in March 2018 and was later voted the best top-3 entry of all that year.

**Imelda May** is a singer from Dublin, Ireland. Though she started her career performing already at the age of 16, she didn’t release her debut album before turning 29. Since then she has released five more albums, several of them receiving either awards or topping the charts. One of her albums “Life Love Flesh Blood” peaked at #2 in the Irish charts and contains the singe “Black Tears” which went on to win FSC #103 in September 2017, and eventually crowned winner of “A Night With The Stars 2017”.

**Taras Topolya** is a Ukrainian singer. While studying at Academy of Internal Affairs in 2007, he and his band “Antytila” participated in the television project “Chance”, but they didn’t win. It did, however, get other Ukrainian artists to recognize the band, and in 2008 they started cooperating with the production center “Catapult Music”, and has since released several albums. In 2019 “Antytila” released the song “HELLO” which both managed to win FSC #126 in August 2019 and “A Night With The Stars 2019”.

## The Participants

**16 Participants this edition:**

Australia (A-lister)

Brazil (anaraqueen)

Norway (Malagant)

Lithuania (Lietuvis)

Taiwan (fango)

Finland (heke1988)

Croatia (Journalist)

Japan (Zorjan)

United Kingdom (AlekS)

Russia (iowacorn)

Mexico (Geborgenheit)

Azerbaijan (Bakinka)

Malaysia (hawadharma)

Sweden (NicoRobin)

Serbia (Seok-jin)

Ukraine (aardvark)