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Ruslana Stepanivna Lyzhychko (born May 24, 1973) is the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 from Lviv, Ukraine.
Born in 1973, she is a singer, dancer, producer, composer, conductor, and pianist. She writes, composes and produces her own songs and music videos.
Ruslana started her career as a winner of Slavyanskiy Bazar song competition in 1996. Her first album, Myt' vesny (Мить весни, A Moment of Spring) received high praise from the critics. It was a relative success given the overall state of Ukrainian music market of that time. Still, wider recognition didn't come until 1998 with the song Svitanok (Sunrise) and the album Myt' Vesny - Dzvinkyj Viter Live. Svitanok was the first big video clip in Ukraine. In 1999 she worked on the Christmas musical Ostanne rizdvo 90th (The Last Christmas of the 90's), which won the Ukrainian Movie of the Year award. Her album Dyki Tantsi (Wild Dances) which was issued in 2003 went double platinum in Ukraine, selling over 200,000 copies. According to the latest sales results (as of 2005), over 500,000 of "Dyki Tantsi" were sold in Ukraine, making the album 5x platinum.
She won the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 with the song Wild Dances, which earned 280 points, receiving points from 34 of the 35 other countries participating in the contest (the exception being Switzerland).
In 2004's disputed Ukrainian presidential elections, she declared her support for Viktor Yushchenko. She was one of the scores of prominent figures that addressed the mass crowds rallying in support of Yushchenko's demand that his original defeat be declared fraudulent. At one stage she was even quoted as saying she was ready to go on hunger strike for the cause.
In 2005, Ruslana appeared at the Eurovision Song Contest held in Kyiv. She performed her new single On Fire. The performance included her carrying a blow torch.
Ruslana designed the cover for Jonathan Safran Foer's "The Unabridged Pocket Book of Lightening" which was produced as part of Penguin Books' 70th birthday celebrations.
In March 2006, she was elected to parliament in Our Ukraine party list as № 5. On June 19, 2007 he has terminated his mandate.
On June 15 2006, Ruslana presented her new single and video Wild Energy. These are the first single and video from Ruslana’s new project, based on the fiction novel by Maryna and Sergij Diachenko Wild Energy. Lana. The unique video in a fantasy style, which is a screen version of a part of the novel, set a new record in the field of musical video making by its scale and technologies. The singer herself appears in the new video in a rather unexpected image, as she is blonde. The first people to see and listen to Ruslana’s Wild Energy will be the Ukrainian mass media and the singer’s fan club members, who will attend the presentation as the special guests. In the autumn of 2006, Ruslana will be producing her new album, Wild Energy. Next day Ruslana went on a FIFA World Cup 2006 tour in Germany to support the Ukrainian national football team. She performed in Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin, Leipzig, and Nuremberg.
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