Olympics Opening Ceremony Question - Dancing level of difficulty

August 2, 2024 7:14 AM

Can you tell me how from a dancing perspective, how difficult the dancing was at the olympic opening ceremony: from skills, to the rain, to the dancing in the rain on a boat moving in a river? It seems next to impossible. How do you prepare, how do you change your approach?
posted by sandmanwv to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (6 answers total)

Here's a Facebook post by one of the Moulin Rouge dancers (copy/pasted in full for those who don't have Facebook):

Addressing the elephant in the room:
Friday, June 26, 2024 should have been one of the absolute highlights of my career. Performing with the world famous Moulin Rouge in the opening ceremonies for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Instead, it turned into the single most embarrassing performance of my life. And on top of that, the internet came out in full force to confirm how bad it was.

I’ve never left a performance and had to console so many of my coworkers and try to help them hold back tears in front of the thousands of camera, trying to uphold the perfect showgirl/boy image. Every single performer was ashamed and in tears and/or furious.

What friends and family who have been kind enough to ridicule and insult us don’t realize is that leading up to the performance, we never were allowed to rehearse on the actual stage. In our first rehearsal the stage was not finished and painted. And the morning rehearsal has a plastic tarp over the stage to protect the new paint from the rain and marking since it rained over night. You can see us in the video here placing ourselves on wet plastic. Not the actual stage.

We arrived on stage for the performance about 10 minutes before we were meant to dance, with towels hidden in our costumes to wipe down the stage if it was at all wet. We watched Lady Gaga’s pre-recorded performance and waited our turn. 1 minute before we were meant to perform, the rain started. We FRANTICALLY tried to dry the stage and the bottoms of our shoes because the rain turned the painted stage to ICE and we could barely walk without slipping. We were dancing on the river. One wrong move and we would fall into the Seine.

With 80 dancers and no way to communicate with all of us, our small group leaders had to make the decision to dance or not dance. The messages didn’t have time to pass all the way down the line before the music started so some dancers started choreography and some didn’t. Some stopped half way through when they felt unsafe. Some tried to continue while only being able to do low kicks and slipping.

Yes, we REHEARSED, people fell, people are injured.

It’s amazing that 135 years of excellence can be undone in 1m20sec.

posted by Pallas Athena at 7:20 AM on August 2 [12 favorites]

Best answer: Wow, what a shame that some of the dancers feel that way... I was blown away by the whole performance. I think the overall effect was spectacular. I hope these dancers have access to the positive feedback the ceremony recieved here in Canada.
posted by winterportage at 8:14 AM on August 2 [12 favorites]

I enjoyed it. They are being too hard on themselves. When I was in a performance art group on the 80s,our
leader said it doesn't matter if our audience is 20 people or filled to the rafters. Dance the same for everyone.
posted by Czjewel at 9:18 AM on August 2

@alliegoodbun is one of the Moulin Rouge dancers who went through that experience. She's a good follow on Instagram.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:26 AM on August 2

from a dancing perspective, how difficult the dancing

I was one that posted a bit of snark about the CanCan dances, and now I know the reason. They were clearly professional dancers that were terrible, but dance just does not work on super slippery surfaces one the edge of a river, and they were clearly on the edge with no/zero depth of a stage to compensate. They were troupers and performed as much as possible. Wow, some went in the water?!?

The dance on the roof was a principle of the Paris Ballet, he was really careful but elegant and beautiful moves.
posted by sammyo at 3:21 PM on August 2

I don't think dancing on a boat (under ideal conditions) would add a lot of additional difficulty, I've danced on parade floats and other than starting and stopping, didn't really notice. Caveat: I was allowed to rehearse on the moving float first and if the water was especially choppy with the weather and other boats and listing back and forth that would definitely make it much more difficult.

The part that kills me is doing a CanCan (which is basically all hopping on one foot while kicking the other one into the air) on a freshly painted, slick, wet surface, while it is still raining. I'm honestly surprised that more people weren't injured or ended up in the river. My heart goes out to them.
posted by magnetsphere at 7:28 AM on August 3