Italians have a reputation for speaking with their hands. And now the producers of the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 will have fun with that during the Semi-Final 2 opening act.
You don’t need to be in the press centre to create exclusive digital content. Since landing in Torino on Wednesday evening, we’ve been working our sources and can now reveal that the opening of SF2 will be built around “Italian gestures.”
Eurovision 2022: Semi-Final 2 opening will focus on “Italian gestures”
We don’t yet know which gestures will come to life on stage. However, we are confident they will draw on those featured in Speak Italian: The Fine Art of the Gesture from legendary graphic designer Bruno Munari.
In the preface of the book, he explained that Italians’ non-verbal way of communicating has become recognised the world over. With the book he wanted to give foreigners another way of understanding Italians.
“We have collected a good many gestures, leaving aside vulgar ones, in order to give an idea of their meaning to foreigners visiting Italy and as a supplement to an Italian dictionary.”
A quick Google identifies some of the most common gestures. These include the “finger purse”, where a person bunches their fingers together — tips pointing upwards — and extends their arm out. Apparently it’s used to convey the idea of, “What do you really mean? What do you want?” (Ma che vuoi?)
The phrase “to read” (leggere) is easy to deduce. You just put your right index finger on your left hand and move it as if reading.
Semi-Final 2 opening plays on “Just Dance” video game
The opening act is inspired by the Just Dance rhythm game series. Each year the game teaches millions of people the choreography to global hits. Eurovision songs have featured heavily in recent years, with Netta, Daði Freyr and Little Big among those who have featured.
The game has a funky neon aesthetic, so it’s possible the opening act will as well. What’s clear from our reporting is that Italian gestures have inspired the choreography and the lyrics. The hosts of the show will move from the stage to the green room and encourage the audience and viewers to move along.
As we wait to see how exactly they execute the opening, here’s a quick tutorial on Italian hand gestures. It comes from YouTuber Marco in a Box. Funnily enough, he used to be our YouTube Partner manager at the YouTube Space in London several years ago. He’s really lovely, so give him a follow!
I didn’t see that opening act in second semi final
Me and my friend recently started using an emoji with a gesture Italians do
Sounds funny at first, but if they combine it with a dance routine … I don’t know. However, I already sense some „bippidi bappidi” tweets coming in.
ARE U KIDDING ME THE TWO THNGS I LOVE THE MOST TOGETHER
also that explain some graphics with pictogramms from the game
could you please send me where are the pictograms visualised
So, Italy is the state with the most UNESCO sites in the world and they want to talk about hand gestures. The producers are not original at all!
Don’t worry at all, you’ll see our Unesco sites in the postcards
Alessandro Cattelan will have a sketch on Italian stereotypes. It was enough that already!
Italy is much more than just a bunch of old buildings.
Italy is much more than stereotypes. Also the level of nonsense of your comment: we are talking about sites with works by Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Giotto e many more artists and you talk about ‘a bunch of old buildings’…
so nothing on the stage? just a bunch of pre-recorded videos of stuff that we been knew for literally hundred of years…Leave those for the postcards!
honestly, you didn’t get at all what I was talking about. Re-read my comments.
I think we will do that because we are able to joke about some stereotypes (and also because everyone in the world use our hand gestures in a wrong way, so we are happy to teach it lol)