Thoughts on the Opening Ceremonies

I'm kind of a sucker for Olympic ceremonies. The huge staging is fascinating on many levels. The really big stuff becomes an enormous technical challenge. There is also the editorial level, where you see what kind of story the creators are telling. (If you had an hour to tell the American story how would you approach it? Chronologically? Geographically? Philosophically?) Last, but not least, does the presentation work on the emotional level or simply look like a big show?
Vancouver decided to heavily honor the indigenous tribes of its area and started the show with a welcome from four tribes. Native American singing and dancing has always left me a bit cold so this didn't do much for me. I wish they'd focused more on that region's beautiful totem work.
After the athletes walk in (always interesting to me) they continued on with the artistic portion of the show. They opened up with a big celebration of winter. I can't think of a week when I wanted to celebrate winter less than this one. Big gobs of snow and cold. Huge winter disruptions to air travel. It was kind of like finding a group of late term mothers and then presenting a celebration of pregnancy.
To be fair, they couldn't have known how bad the timing would be when this was planned. And there really was some very nice video presentation on the floor. Most striking was a pod of whales with actual spouts of breath!
To me the highlight of the show was a segment that highlighted the Canadian prairie. It featured an acrobat on guidewires, preforming to Judy Collins 'Both Sides Now'. Very beautiful. A near second place was kd lang with 'Hallelujah'. I kind of think she should do all of her concerts with that exact same type of setting.
The actual torch lighting was somewhat more exciting than they expected since a malfunction delayed the finale. There was supposed to be four pillars popping out of the stage but only three of them did. After a few minutes they just raised what they could and lit it. I can't imagine how badly the technical people felt!
During the broadcast they remarked that Vancouver only spent about a tenth the amount that Beijing did on the opening ceremonies ($40 mil vs $400 mil). I really can't fault them for that. The show certainly didn't have as much punch but it did have some very nice moments.