MTV confirmed in January 2009 that an internal selection would be held to select the Hungarian entry for the 2009 contest. MTV opened a submission period for interested artists and songwriters to submit their entries until 2 February 2009. A jury reviewed all 105 submissions submitted during the submission period, and announced on 3 February 2009 that Márk Zentai with the song "If You Wanna Party" as the selected entrant for the 2009 contest. However, shortly after the announcement, it came to light that the song selected had been released in 2004 under the title "We Became Friends", which acted as the Swedish Big Brothertheme song. Zentai therefore withdrew his song from the selection shortly after this news became apparent, and MTV was set for finding a new entrant for the contest. On 4 February 2009, MTV announced that actress Kátya Tompos with the song "Magányos csónak" would replace Zentai as the Hungarian representative. However, the Alliance of Hungarian Popular Music Composers and Songwriters protested that they did not feel as if the jury had long enough to make a correct decision on 3 February 2009, and were dissatisfied with the internal selection instead of a national final where the public could vote for the winner. Other claims were made as well, such as that the songwriters have to be from his or her motherland and that the jury was not professional. MTV, however, stood by their decision of selecting the song internally, as well as revealing that the jury of television and music industry professionals chose the song all day long on 3 February 2009, and that they were satisfied with the jury's decision. On 10 February 2009, Tompos announced her withdrawal from the contest, alleging she wanted to focus on her theatre career and that she had no time to prepare her participation in Eurovision properly, because she takes part in 8 plays of 3 different theatres. As a result of this, the MTV jury had to convene once again to select another artist to represent Hungary at Eurovision. On 23 February 2009, after shortlisting three songs from the remaining submissions, MTV announced during a press conference that Zoli Ádok with the song "Dance With Me" was selected as the Hungarian entrant for the 2009 contest.
At Eurovision
Since Hungary is not one of the "Big Four" nor was it the host of the 2009 contest, it had to compete in one of the two semi-finals. At the semi-final allocation draw on 30 January, it was decided that the country would compete in the second semi-final on 14 May 2009. Zoli performed for Hungary in position 11 in the running order, following Slovenia and preceding Azerbaijan. He failed to qualify Hungary to the final for a second successive year. On stage, Zoli was joined by three female dancers and two backing vocalists Gábor Heincz and Jnoffin Kasai. In the beginning of the performance, Zoli and his three female dancers wore black and white costumes. Then, the dancers removed Zoli's costume before undressing themselves, with only skimpy dresses remaining on the girls and a skin-tight shirt on the singer. The LED projections during the performance have floating shapes in the verses, and expanding white lines and the wordsDance With Me written across them during the chorus. In Hungary, both the semi-finals and the final were broadcast on M1 with commentary by Gábor Gundel Takács. The Hungarian spokesperson revealing the result of the Hungarian vote in the final was Éva Novodomszky.
