jenAMOS.: Beijing Olympics Grand Opening

2,008 drummers for the grand opening
15,000 performers & none repeated
Each performer with very detailed costumes
30,000 fireworks
An epic lighting of the torch
The greatest grand opening in the Olympics history

On 8/8/08 at 8 p.m.

Zhang Yimou
You are ridiculous
In the most respectable
& admired way, of course :]

And seriously in the most admired way possible, because I was so inspired. Not only was it the greatest grand opening I've seen for anything, but also it showed a great deal of interdependence & how effective it can be. In this performance:

Every single person, movement and thing mattered.
Every single person knew their purpose, their role.
It wasn’t a competition on which performer could perform better than the other, it was a team effort.
Over thousands of people working together and from the spectator’s eye, the performance was just so surreal.
They were so precise, detailed, animated, all of them.
There was unity and they all shared a common goal: to throw a performance that everyone will remember.

There was no insignificant person. And that was just the performers, just imagining how many people are behind the scenes… The time and effort spent on this performance.

…Intense! Haha

Interdependence. I love it. With a population at 1.3 billion people, Zhang Yimou did a great job having performers instead of technology in many cases (such as the rippling blocks and when carrying the really pretty lady who wore silks).

Yeah… I’m moved.

So moved.

Oh, and as for the whole two hours where the 204 nations made their grand entrances…Thank goodness I have Ti-Vo because I would not have stayed long enough to watch the lighting of the torch in the end. Which was also so intense! Have you ever seen a torch be lit like that before?!

Until then here are some pictures I picked up off of google and other random facts from NBC Olympics!