After the Seine, the Stade de France. For the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, Sunday, August 11 from 9 p.m., director Thomas Jolly has chosen the 2,800 m2 of the Saint-Denis stadium (Seine-Saint-Denis) for a show entitled “Records”. Lasting forty minutes, this new show, highly anticipated after the controversies surrounding the opening ceremony, is intended to mix “wonder” and “dystopia”, a dark genre describing apocalyptic worlds, says Thomas Jolly. The story promises a trip between past and future: an interstellar traveler, discovering the remains of the Olympic Games in a future where they will have disappeared, decides to rebuild them.
If the French breakdancer Arthur Cadre will be the common thread of this great tableau and will take place in the air, more than a hundred performers, acrobats, dancers and circus artists will accompany him. For the closing, Air and Phoenix, legends of French electro very appreciated in the United States, will conclude the show of Thomas Jolly. The first group, originally from Versailles, was propelled in 1998 by the album Playground Loveoriginal soundtrack of the film The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola. The second played, among other things, at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2010 with the duo Daft Punk, who have since split up and were a notable absentee from these Paris Olympics.
Tom Cruise causes controversy
But expectations are also focused on the fifteen minutes entrusted, as tradition dictates, to the organizers of the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles. According to several American media outlets, Tom Cruise, the actor known for his roles in “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun”, will notably perform a stunt on the roof of the Stade de France. His presence, confirmed half-heartedly by the resigning Minister of Sports and the Olympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, is nevertheless causing controversy, as Tom Cruise belongs to Scientology, which has been criticized several times for sectarian excesses.
Other names mentioned: rap veteran Snoop Dogg, a special correspondent for NBC TV who has become a viral icon on the networks outside of Paris, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, an iconic West Coast rock group from the 1990s, likely to raise a stadium. Singer Billie Eilish, a native of LA, could also be present, while a Californian from R&B, HER, will sing the American anthem. Several ceremonial moments are also planned: the presentation of the last medals, a parade of athletes (with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Antoine Dupont as flag bearers for France), the extinguishing of the flame and the proclamation of the closing of the Games by the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach.