Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2017
# Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2017

Macedonia participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2017 which took place on 25 November 2017 in Tbilisi, Georgia. The Macedonian broadcaster MRT was responsible for organising their entry for the contest. Mina Blažev was internally selected on 8 September 2017 as the Macedonian representative and her song for the contest, "Dancing Through Life", was presented on 8 October 2017.

## Background

Prior to the 2017 contest, Macedonia had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest twelve times, under the provisional reference of "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", since its debut at the inaugural contest in 2003. Macedonia were absent twice from the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 and 2014. They have never won the contest, with their best results being at the 2007 and 2008, represented by the duo Rosica Kulakova and Dimitar Stojmenovski, and Bobi Andonov respectively, achieving fifth place. In the 2016 contest, Martija Stanojković represented her country in Valletta, Malta with the song "Love Will Lead Our Way". Despite being one of the fan favorites for the victory and due to the removal of the televote, the song ended 12th out of 17 entries with 41 points.

## Before Junior Eurovision

On 8 September 2017, the Macedonian broadcaster revealed that they had chosen the fourteen-year-old artist Mina Blažev internally to represent the Republic of Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2017. Her song for the contest, "Dancing Through Life" was revealed on 8 October 2017 along with its official music video. It is written and composed by Aleksander Masevski, who also was responsible for the creation of the Macedonian song for the 2016 contest, "Love Will Lead Our Way", performed by Martija Stanojkovic. The song ended unexpectedly in 12th place out of 17 countries with 41 points despite being a huge favorite to win and due to the removal of the televote for the first time.

## Artist and song information

### Mina Blažev

Mina Blažev (born 12 June 2003) is a Macedonian singer. She represented Macedonia at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2017 in Tbilisi, Georgia on 25 November 2017.

Blažev's biggest achievement was winning the special Pearl Award at the International Music Festival "Ezerski Biseri" earlier this year. Mina was also part of a talent show called Pinkove Zvezdice, which is very popular in the Balkan region. To date, she has received a total of seven first prizes, three-second and one third prize in national and international competitions. She attends singing classes at the Zvezdicki Music Academy. Her biggest idols are Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber.

### "Dancing Through Life"

"Dancing Through Life" is a song by Macedonian singer Mina Blažev. It represented Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2017.

## At Junior Eurovision

During the opening ceremony and the running order draw which took place on 20 November 2017, Macedonia was drawn to perform eighth on 26 November 2017, following Ireland and preceding Georgia.

### Voting

In 2017, a new voting system was introduced, in which the results were determined by 50% online voting and 50% jury voting. Every country had a national jury that consisted of three music industry professionals and two children aged between 10 and 15 who were citizens of the country they represented. The rankings of those jurors were combined to make an overall top ten.

The online voting consisted of two phases. The first phase of the online voting began on 24 November 2017 when a recap of all the rehearsal performances was shown on the contest's website Junioreurovision.tv before the viewers could vote. After this, voters also had the option to watch longer one-minute clips from each participant's rehearsal. This first round of voting ended on Sunday 26 November at 15:59 CET. The second phase of the online voting took place during the live show and began right after the last performance and was open for 15 minutes. International viewers were able vote for a minimum of three and a maximum of five songs. They were also able to vote for their own country's song. These votes were then turned into points which were determined by the percentage of votes received. For example, if a song received 10% of the votes, it received 10% of the available points.

