Friday, February 12, 2010

Opening Ceremony

(I don't have any photos of the opening ceremony but this is the t.v we watched it on)

This years Opening Ceremony was radically different from the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics. For starters its obviously the winter Olympics not the summer.The Vancouver opening ceremony was impressive but not in the mass numbers that Bejing was. Remember them they had about 500 drummers all on stage at once? The Vancouver Olympics are nothing like that. (similar mascots though) The most people on stage at once was maybe at most 75-100? not sure if i'm getting my numbers straight but there wasn't mass numbers like Beijing.

The beginning was really cool! A video was showed about a snowboarder going down a hill in I think Whistler passing by the different dates of the Winter Olympics, then when the video was finished the SAME snowboarder jumped out and snowboarded down to the middle of the field. Man that must have been amazing experience for that guy.........

Did you see NELLY FURTADO??? And Bryan Adams They were amazing! They Opening Ceremony definitley had GREAT music. Nikki Yanofski..... Wow. I can't believe she's only 17 years old she has such a powerful voice. Almost too powerful you couldn't quite understand the words. But still, 17 years old and performing at a world event.


My favourite part was all the cultural parts, the dancing, and the Aboriginal peoples welcome. The floor was really well done, by that i mean all the disappearing and appearing. The totem poles rising out of nowhere, and the bear coming roaring out. The dances about the different parts Canada, the forests, the oceans, the orcas, and the salmon. I thought it was beautiful the way the fabric flowed from the sky to the ocean or ice or forest floor, whatever it happened to be, it worked.

I think Rick Hansen was the perfect person to carry the torch at the end. He's an inspiring Canadian that people have a great respect for. People around here were betting on Wayne Gretzky, and they were right! Can you believe the actual lighting though? Apparently the person who designed the torch lighting, David Atkins also designed the one in Salt Lake City that coincidentaly also stopped halfway up to the top. He's not going to be designing much after this. When the 4 Pillars were supposed to rise out of the ground and cross together in the middle, ONE DIDN'T RISE UP! So the entire part was delayed waiting for the fourth pillar. But they just decided to go ahead, so the fourth pillar didn't rise up leaving Catrina Le May Doan stranded without a pole to light. Wayne Gretzky, Steve Nash, and Nancy Greene all successfully lite the other 3 poles. It was really funny to watch on T.V because before they keep panning back and forth from each face, each looking more worried then the previous. Nancy Greene knew what to do though, she just kept smiling and waving. Once the indoor cauldron was lite Wayne Gretzky was carried in the back of a truck to outside the CTV broadcasting station and lite the outdoor cauldron. This one luckily was up the whole time leaving no chance for mishaps. I found it kinda funny that Rick Hansen didn't light the cauldron, but he did carry it into the stadium, so i guess it evens out.


Personally i really enjoyed the opening ceremony and the only thing that would make it better is......... THE LIGHTING WORKING! But actually besides that i don't have a single complaint, i think Canada was represented perfectly by the native people, the athletes, and all the dancers and performers. The francophone people could probably have been represented better, but I think Canada has already won gold.


3 comments:

  1. Yay for Canadian musicians, they were amazing! I'm still not too sure how I liked the Opera one, but I guess it's tradition. I loved the scene with the man on the prairies, and then floating into the sky, so neat!

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