Paralympic Opening Ceremonies – Part 2

Just in case you missed Part 1 of the Ceremonies, you can read it here.

As members of a live stadium audience, we all had to practice our choreography. And I’m happy to announce that we were all part of a real world record last night – biggest flash mob – due to the coordinating dance moves of over 55,000 people.

But World Records don’t just make themselves. We had to work for it. First off, we had to learn the words to sing (I know! Singing AND dancing!) from these DJs:

These guys made me nervous – there’s no railing on the front of that stage. They had to be aware and alert the whole time they danced and played music for us all. I had to fight the urge to scream, “Watch out for the edge!” a few times during the evening.

We had to learn words like, “Hey!” and “Ohm!”

Those guys were awesome. They (and a girl in a white sweater) announced each country as the teams arrived. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Next on the agenda was learning the dance moves.

They had dancing girls and guys all around each level to demonstrate the dance moves we’d be incorporating as well as some teeny tiny people down on the floor teaching us, too:

We had to clap a lot and jump up and down a few times and point up in the air:

And then I looked over at Mike and found that he had gotten into the spirit completely at this point:

He was already in his poncho and had his pompom (and mine) ready to go. Good to see he was in the spirit.

Next up? Pompom practice:

They told us we should only turn on the lights of the pompoms at certain times. But no one waited. We had the lights turned on all the time. Come on. What did you expect? There are lights in the pompoms. We can’t NOT turn them on. Sheesh.

And here’s another shot of us all practicing the dance moves again. Please note how we are all in time and looking like a coherent group.

I think we’re all ready for the big welcome for these international athletes.

Tagged as: BC Place, Opening Ceremonies, Paralympics, tnmh, Van2010, Vancouver