As with the Olympic Games, the Paralympic events will be preceded by a grand ceremony that will take place on the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées this Wednesday evening. The staging has been entrusted to Thomas Jolly, the artistic director who already officiated with his teams during the two previous ceremonies for the Games. Interview.
RFI: So tell us how you imagined and designed this Paralympics opening ceremony?
Thomas Jolly : Initially, with the team of authors who accompanied me on all the ceremonies, we developed an entire artistic direction, an entire concept around the paradox. You are beginning to understand our style a little, that is to say that to advance two or three big ideas, we must first establish the realities.
So, we first used the city, the Place de la Concorde to draw this line that goes from “discord” to “concord”. And this to remind that if we have a focus on people with disabilities thanks to the Paralympic Gamesperhaps there are good questions to ask about inclusion.
Moreover, making the city the setting for this ceremony is already a paradox, since the city is not completely adapted for people with disabilities. And that is already asking a good question from there that we wanted to do.
So your idea was to somehow promote a message through this show and this ceremony?
In reality, I believe that shows, and I think this has been noticed, are always political. There, I believe that behind the Paralympic Games and everything that comes in their wake, I mean, competitions, events, exploits that will happen, there is always deep down the question of inclusion. The question of looking at oneself, of recognizing oneself. The question of disability in our societies.
Moreover, you will notice that we say “person with a disability”. It is often their situation that creates the disability. Stepping off a sidewalk, taking the subway, these are the situations that create the disability. So, I think it is important to change our perspective.
And then, this Place de la Concorde still has a very pretty name, “la Concorde”… it wasn’t always called that. It was after the revolution [où elle a pris ce nom, NDLR] where we have, in a certain way, changed society. And maybe this is a new opportunity to change our perspective. Why not? It is obviously a wish, to advance faster and stronger the issues of planning and accessibility for more inclusion.
And did you call upon artists with disabilities?
Even at the beginning, we interviewed several Paralympic athletes to be aware of these issues. And then Alexander Ekman [chorégraphe de la cérémonie, NDLR] called upon performers with disabilities, mixed with other so-called able-bodied performers. And this, in order to create this meeting, precisely.
► All our articles on the Paralympic Games can be found here.
► The Paralympic Games programme and calendar can be found here.