PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – A parade of visual designs from an international team of designers were seen by spectators within the 35,000-capacity PyeongChang Olympic stadium venue, and also via TV and internet to millions of viewers around the globe on Feb. 9, with an overall theme of “Peace in Motion.” The $78-million stadium was built specifically for the opening and closing ceremonies only, not for sporting events. The structure will next be used for the Closing Ceremonies on Feb. 25, and also for the Paralympics, March 9-18, before being dismantled.
Setting the stage for a record number of winter Olympic athletes — 2,900 from 92 countries who carried their nation’s flags within the stadium — with Russian athletes parading behind the Olympic flag itself — the opening ceremonies started off with a large-scale production with a narrative flow linking innocence with experience, the past with the future.
The show also featured elements from Korean folklore and South Korea’s flag, the Taegeukgi, which incorporates the symbol of universal harmony, the yin and yang, at its center, materializing via projection after a massive, synchronized performance involving scores of Janggu drummers.
The creative collaborators on the project included artistic director Yang Jung-woong and executive director/creative, Song Seung-whan, with other key designers including Koo Yun-young (lighting), Mok-Jin-yo and Kim Kyo-seong (video), Son Mu-yeul (pyro), Lim Chung-il (scenery) and Kim Sang-taek andPark Dong-woo overseeing the production and art direction for the show.
The production included elaborate projections from video director Patrice Bouqueniaux and the team from ETC Audiovisuel SA using Panasonic projectors mounted on five towers surrounding the stage, which allowed for the elaborately costumed dancers to be bathed in vivid, high-res imagery. These began with the countdown to the ceremony, including the ringing of the Bell of Peace, modeled on the copper Bell of Sangwongsa, which dates from the year 725 and is kept in a temple located about 12 miles away.
The narrative starts a series of adventures experienced by five children — the same number as the Olympic rings — who also represent five elements: fire, water, wood, metal, and earth as they explore cave artwork that serves as a link to the past. Some of the artworks magically come to life, including a larger-than-life white tiger, a symbol of good fortune, who guards a snowy realm along with a dragon, a phoenix and turtle. (The mascot of the Games is also a white tiger,
The children encounter a variety of lavishly lit wonderlands from the past to the present, joined by Korean folkloric characters and performers, with the action on stage morphing from fantastic animals and plants to the South Korean flag with its red-and-blue yin-and-yang symbol at its center to a river journey that takes the children on a river trip as the weather turns stormy.
The tempest calms as the children make their way into a futuristic scene with high-tech robots and the Gate of the Future, made from 120 LED-emblazoned frames, with more dramatic visuals to follow with the Media Link segment, with close to 60 LED strands linking floor visuals upward to a circular ring above the stage, creating a huge, dynamic cylinder of light.
More than 1,200 people then entered the stage, standing in dove formation, to the music of “Imagine” by the Beatles, with their hand-held LED candles wirelessly synched to the LEDs given to the spectators so that the light from within the dove radiates outward to the crowd in the 35,000-capacity stadium.
Moving on to the lighting of the Olympic torch, the ceremony followed the progress of the Olympic Torch, which had completed a 101-day relay across South Korea. On its final journey up to the Olympic Cauldron, the torch was carried jointly by two members of the combined North and South Korea hockey team — one from each side.
As the two torch bearers carried the torch up the steps — lit up in white, and resembling a Nordic ski jump — the lighting highlighting their progress as they made their way to the top. There, Korean gold-medal winning figure skater Yuna Kim did the final honors, lighting the white ceramic tunnel sculpture leading up to the cauldron itself. Once the cauldron was ignited, a massive fireworks display also lit up the winter sky, and the Games officially began.
For a look at the Olympics Opening Ceremonies as seen by viewers of NBC, go to http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/opening-ceremony.
PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games Opening Ceremony Photo Credit Andy Miah (Some Rights Reserved)
