Closing ceremony: from 'Beijing 8 Minutes' to mystery guests
South Korea and North Korea enter PyeongChang Olympic Plaza during the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games’ opening ceremony on Feb. 9. / Korea Times file
By Ko Dong-hwan
Chinese director Zhang Yimou at an event paying tribute to him during 12th Marrakesh International Film Festival in Morocco in December 2012. / Korea Times file
Almost two weeks of exciting sports at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics are coming to a close and less than a week remains before the closing ceremony at the Olympic Plaza in the host city.
Some people are anticipating the upcoming finale to be similar to the Feb. 9 opening ceremony, with drones forming the five Olympic rings in the air and torch-bearing skiers coming down a slope, while other are just looking forward to the spectacle.
The closing ceremony will start at 8 p.m., Sunday, and embrace all Olympic participants under the theme “fusion,” bringing together nearly 3,000 athletes from 93 countries, volunteers for the Olympics and the audience to the plaza.
Beijing, the next host city, will also own part of the ceremony, exhibiting a show to entice the audience to attend the next Winter Olympics.
To promote the coming event, China will showcase a performance during the closing ceremony, “Beijing 8 Minutes,” directed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou. Recognized at prominent film festivals in Venice, Cannes and Berlin, Zhang organized the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
In an interview on CCTV, Feb. 19, he said the show has been prepared “so far without problems.” He said the weather in PyeongChang, which he noted was the biggest risk, was “much better than I imagined” and hoped it would not be too gusty Sunday.
The show, he said, will portray China’s “new aspects,” combining the latest technologies, traditional elements and scenes of winter sports such as skating and skiing.
According to a report by Chinese entertainment online portal Huabian, Zhang’s crews have rehearsed for about two months in Beijing and Changping in a simulated setting with the details of PyeongChang taken into account.
Song Seung-hwan / Korea Times file
Aside from the Chinese show, the closing ceremony will be directed by Song Seung-hwan, the creator of the South Korean non-verbal show “Nanta,” a percussion performance using kitchenware.
In a press conference Feb. 14, Song said the ceremony will be “free of political concerns, such as a surprise appearance by North Korean performers or those involved in the regime.”
The ceremony will not include Nanta, which has been running since 1997 and has attracted an accumulated 10 million global viewers as of 2015. “I wanted to create an event with new things from different elements,” Song said.
He revealed the event will be in line with the theme of “fusion,” mixing the Olympics’ much-touted state-of-the-art IT technologies with other genres.
It will feature “one or two mystery guests” about whom all involved staff members signed a “memorandum of secrecy” not to release any information, according to the director. He suggested watching the ceremony in real time to find out who the guests are.
The confirmed star lineup for the closing ceremony includes K-pop artist Baek Hyun from boy band EXO and CL from now-defunct K-pop girl band 2NE1.
Outside the venue for the closing ceremony, at Live Site in PyeongChang, a musical concert will add to the day. South Korean drummer Lino Park will perform a one-hour concert starting at 6 p.m., two hours ahead of the ceremony.
Park, now on a world tour, comes back from concerts in Malaysia and Singapore for the gig. Surfing MCM, Park’s global manager, said the concert will be “dynamic, as are the Olympics,” and feature K-pop girl band Sunny Days’ vocalist Heuira.