What to expect at the opening ceremony?

More than a month after the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, Thomas Jolly, the artistic director, is once again at the helm to stage with “the same ambition” the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games on Wednesday evening.

Its organizers promise it will be as spectacular as the Olympic Games. The opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, which will kick off eleven days of sports competitions, will be held on Tuesday, August 28, from the Avenue des Champs-Elysées to the Place de la Concorde in Paris (starting at 8 p.m. live on France 2 and france.tv). Called “Paradoxe”, it will attempt to show the gap between a society that wants to be inclusive but remains full of prejudices against people with disabilities. And it has a few surprises in store…

Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the Paris Games ceremonies, hopes that the three-hour show will be released “heroic clichés about people with disabilities, because it’s not being a hero to take on everyday challenges […] linked to societal and urban barriers”. He also recalls that “Putting the city as a backdrop for this ceremony is already a paradox since the city is not completely adapted for people with disabilities.”

He therefore chose the Swede Alexander Ekman to choreograph this ceremony. 140 dancers, including 16 with disabilities, will participate. For the music, it is once again Victor Le Masne, composer of the very successful Olympic anthem, who worked on scores with “lots of drums, lots of keyboards, lots of diversity”, in a “crossing our musical repertoire”.

For the costumes, styling director Daphné Bürki recruited the French stylist Louis-Gabriel Nouchi (known as LGN), who won over the series’ costume designers Emily in Paris to create some 700 outfits, with the challenge of adapting them to artists with disabilities.

These outfits must revisit the French flag by adding touches of gold, silver and feathers. “I immediately set up a system of personalized meetings with all the performers to understand technically what their physical needs were, explains LGN. There were people who said ‘I can’t have sleeves that are too long because my arms have to be in contact with the chair’ or others who preferred to show one leg rather than the other.”

35,000 spectators will attend this show and the parade of 4,400 para-athletes from 182 delegations on the Place de la Concorde, as well as several thousand on the lower part of the Champs-Elysées. As for the cauldron, it will be lit again and will take off from the Jardin des Tuileries to remain in the Parisian sky during these Paralympic Games. Who will light it? This is one of the last mysteries of the ceremony.