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Paralympic Opening Ceremony

Posted by Camilla Brueton, Thursday 30th August, 2012

Image showing the Olympic Stadium full of athletes at the Opening Ceremony.

Last night I was a volunteer in the 3500 strong cast for the London 2012 Paralympic Games Opening Ceremony. It was a moving ceremony with a strong narrative bringing together science, sport, art and culture.

As well as welcoming more than 4000 athletes to London, the Paralympic Opening Ceremony told the story of a character called Miranda. We followed her on a journey of discovery encompassing deep questions about our perception of our place in the universe posed by Stephen Hawkings, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Newton’s discovery of gravity (and a whole load of apples), a wide range of beautiful aerial stunts by 42 disabled performers and a celebration of the Disability Arts and political movement with a performance of Ian Dury’s ‘Spasticus Artisticus’ accompanied by performers (including Sir Ian McKellen and Miranda) waving placards demanding ‘rights’ in front of an oversized inflatable version of Marc Quinns’ sculpture ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’ in the centre of the stadium.

Whilst taking part in the dress rehearsal of the ceremony last weekend when the section with “Spasticus Autisticus’ began, I began to feel excited. I had expected the important story of Sir Ludwig Guttman, Stoke Mandiville and the history of the Paralympic movement to be featured, but this ceremony was now seizing the opportunity to bring disability arts and sports together on a world stage, to speak to a UK audience about the history of the disability movement in this country and to promote disability culture which the mainstream is so often unaware of.

As discussed on this blog previously, sport and art are not always easy bedfellows. The Paralympics and Olympics both come with a range of controversial sponsors, yet again the creative, cultural space of the opening ceremony has been used as a tool for making a profound, but slightly alternative statement about life in Britain- and sharing our histories, achievements and values.

The two different Opening Ceremonies have also opened up questions about mainstreaming - if the Paralympics and Olympics become totally integrated, so Paralympic and Olympic events appear as an integrated schedule, would the identity of the Paralympics and the celebration of disabled culture we saw last night be subsumed by the whole?

So what did I do last night? I’m not a dancer, nor an actor… Through an open audition process for the Ceremonies cast for London 2012 I became earmarked for a role which largely seemed to revolve around my ability to look like I’m having a good time, that I smile a lot, am generally quite friendly and can dance (well – dance like you would on a night out, not like a dancer…). Welcome to the world of the ‘Audience Leader’. We’re there to try and get everyone involved in the party and to manage any stunts involving the audience. A bonus of our role is that we get to see the show too. Last night the crowd were great- really friendly, really enthusiastic and really excited to be there. The amount of people who thanked me on their way out for dancing inanely for hours was really generous and totally unexpected.

Being a member of the volunteer cast for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies at Olympics and the Opening Ceremony for the Paralympics has been an amazing experience and an insight into what seems to be a global bandwagon of mass movement and production.

It has also been a privilege to be part of what I hope are performances that will live on in the nation’s psyche for sometime to come.

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Friday 31st August, 2012

Camilla Brueton

Here's a slightly fuzzy image of the Alison Lapper sculpture, behind performers waving placards which spell out the word 'Rights'.

Thursday 30th August, 2012

Esther Fox

Great to hear about it from "the horses mouth". I really liked the ceremony and agree it did something quite profound in highlighting disabled cultural activity - much broader than just sport, and seems to have sparked off some interesting and challenging discussion about the current climate.. I think we are entering a very interesting period of time.

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