There was both fatigue and emotion in the words of Thomas Jolly on the morning of Saturday, July 27, the day after an opening ceremony he directed, which was hailed the world over for its originality and ambition. “We’ve been working on this ceremony for almost two years, and we couldn’t have imagined yesterday morning that we’d have an extra guest in the form of rain. You know the motto of Paris? ‘Fluctuat nec mergitur.’ It means ‘beaten by the waves but doesn’t sink.’ It’s the spirit of Paris that mixed with the Olympic spirit last night. That’s how I took it,” explained Jolly at a press conference with Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris Organizing Committee for the Games, Thierry Reboul, the head of ceremonies, and representatives of the IOC.
The theater man quoted Seneca, the Roman philosopher and playwright: “Life is not about waiting for storms to pass, but about learning to dance in the rain.”
“That’s what I saw yesterday, people dancing,” he enthused, speaking about a sense of “duty done” despite the additional technical difficulties caused by the rain, which notably forced the cancellation of dance and music scenes on the rooftops of Paris. “Everyone was in the rain. We stuck together for this shared humanity in which everyone could recognize themselves, find themselves and say: Yes, we’re all different, but we’re all together. That was really the idea behind this ceremony,” he added.
Jolly explained his artistic choices, watched by 300,000 spectators along six kilometers of the Seine. Céline Dion on the Eiffel Tower for Edith Piaf’s “Hymne à l’Amour?” A “message of love,” a “bridge between our continents,” even if the Canadian singer’s state of health had long led to fears that she would not be able to perform on the second floor of the Iron Lady. Aya Nakamura dancing with the Republican Guard in front of the Institut de France? A choice made early on in her reflections on the event to promote the “vivacity of France and its language.”
‘Message of love’
“This meeting between these two types of art – academic, more institutional art, with pop, urban, modern art – could create beauty. Throughout the evening, in all the scenes, I wanted to say: We think they don’t go together, we want to put things in boxes, but in reality when these boxes meet, it creates beauty, it creates emotion, it creates joy, it creates sharing,” added the director.
In a world shattered by war, Jolly acknowledged the political dimension of his show, “not in the political sense, but in the sense of the Greek word polis, the city. We talk about ourselves, and as soon as we talk about ourselves, for me we’re political. Last night, it was republican ideas, ideas of inclusion, ideas of caring, generosity and solidarity that we desperately need. Jolly also wants to believe in the magic of moments shared in front of 22 million French people live on television. “I wanted to send a message of love and inclusion, and not at all to divide people.”
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