Thomas Jolly, “half man, half safe”

The artistic director of Paris 2024 has just lifted part of the veil covering the mysterious opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on July 26… To the journalist from World come to spy on his work, the public’s favorite director assures that each challenge overcome will enrich the show. We’re so looking forward to it!

Thanks to a report published in the daily The world, some joyful news finally reaches us. While the country is a little tense, particularly due to the political situation, this feels great.

The good news newspaper

The major evening daily reveals everything it knows about the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. If the organizers are still looking for security agents for this summer event, which has been described for months as highly grandiose but also highly risky, artistic preparations are going well on their side. “I wanted to build an inverted Eiffel Tower, that wasn’t possible,” director Thomas Jolly immediately confides to the journalists responsible for telling us this good news. Unfortunately, there has been no question of seeing the heads of our kings emerging from the Seine for a while either.

In a hangar in Saint-Denis (93), where rehearsals are currently being held in the greatest secrecy, this popular woke artist also regrets having had to scale back another of his ambitions: “On one of the bridges [il n’a pas le droit de dire lequel], we wanted to do a large ballet with two hundred dancers. Experts calculated that with the resonance and vibrations of the dancers’ weight, the bridge would not withstand. We had to transform the painting”, deplores the creator. But, let us be reassured: because elsewhere, 3000 dancers “from here and everywhere”400 “performers” and a hundred boats will be well dispatched for the greatest pleasure of the eyes. Around the Seine, four stages and no less than ten or twelve paintings on the banks are planned to welcome the whole world, the newspaper understands.

A ceremony outside a stadium, a great first

The usual protocol is completely disrupted; delegations from different nations will parade at the same time as the sumptuous artistic and musical show will be given. A show which must last almost four hours.

The initial idea for this ceremony outside a stadium came from Thierry Reboul, a 56-year-old events specialist from Marseille, who holds the prestigious position of executive director of the ceremonies and the Paris 2024 “brand”. The Parisian paints the following portrait of this man with a big heart and a taste for risk, whose talent did not escape Thierry Estanguet: “Megalo for some, genius for others, Thierry Reboul shakes up the codes”.

Thomas Jolly, whose changing the codes is probably also part of his DNA, is enthusiastic: “The show, the parade, the elements of the protocol, I decided to interweave everything. Make the whole city dance, synchronize. There has never been a ceremony that was not in a stadium. So, there is no model. You have to constantly question everything.” So, as the event approaches, the 42-year-old star choreographer is as excited as he is anxious! “I won’t hide from you that I have nights where I feel a little anxious… And also days”. He can count on the support of Maud Le Pladec in this event, a choreographer with whom he has already collaborated, and whose work is characterized by striking energy and synchronization. “For the Olympics, dancing is me. It’s my DNA [comprendre : cette énergie, cette foule compacte de danseurs, précise Le Monde] Not a bridge, not a bank that will not be inhabited by an artistic event” she assures us. This promises to be grandiose. “Maud has a broad culture of dance […] We started working on the Olympics in December 2022. The structure of the ceremony was laid out in June 2023. And, since March, it has become concrete. The costumes come out of the workshops, and we see here, for the first time, Maud’s dance marrying the music composed by Victor Le Masne. explains Thomas Jolly, delighted.

Also read: A cinema in the flow of times

Thomas Jolly is best known for resurrecting the musical “Starmania.” In his report, The world describes it as ” gourmand ” and concerned about“bait without revealing anything, so as to maintain suspense and keep the surprise”. We would almost salivate… “Every show I imagined in my head never turned out anything like what I imagined. No, it doesn’t create frustration: if an idea doesn’t follow through, it’s not good. If we understand correctly, the director seems quite sure not to make a mistake. Phew! “I’m a safe. Right now, I’m half man, half safe. Hearing people’s fantasies, knowing what’s going to happen, often makes me smile.” explains the facetious artist who will not say more about the long-awaited production and for which he benefits from a tidy envelope (we are talking about more than 150 million euros for 300,000 spectators).

Growing enthusiasm expected from Parisians

Even if he would have preferred Daft Punk, the music is therefore entrusted to Victor Le Masne, already at his side on “Starmania”, already at the initiative of the new version of “La Marseillaise” with astronaut Thomas Pesquet on saxophone, but also darling of the greatest talents of French variety (he collaborated with the eccentric singers Philippe Katerine and Eddy de Pretto, as well as with the singer Juliette Armanet); but we do not yet know very well who will come to perform a singing tour on the Seine on July 26. After the moronic rappers Soprano and Alonzo, and the nightmare Jul during the arrival of the Olympic flame in Marseille, what does the City of Lights have in store for us? Celine Dion, somewhat recovered from her illness? Aya Nakamura, if and only if she sings Piaf and avoids lascivious poses? Much has already been said… Marc Cerrone and his hit “Supernature” seem almost certain, the British-Albanian Dua Lipa would have been approached… The RN deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy would dream of seeing Mylène Farmer. We should at least add to the latter an Etienne Daho for us to hear something… As for Michel Sardou, the name of the non-deconstructed singer with the powerful voice is unfortunately never mentioned, of course! “The ceremony promises much more radical surprises than the presence or absence of Aya Nakamura” assured Thomas Jolly, in April, in Telerama. At the microphone of France Inter, in October, he announced that everything he did was ” policy “and that Britney Spears was worth Shakespeare… So no offense to the grumpy people, this opening ceremony could be a fantastic success, thinks Anne Hidalgo in her Town Hall, where a swim in the river is being prepared for mid-July flowing under the windows. “We’re fed up with all these people struggling to enjoy things who don’t want us to be able to celebrate something together. Either way, we’re here, and we’re doing it.” the city councilor got angry at the Paris Council on May 22.

Also read: The “French pride” that fills the speeches at the Olympic Games is an illusion

Certainly, as Elisabeth Lévy rightly observed last fall when Thomas Jolly made himself known beyond the small world of subsidized public theater, while the war of civilizations is restarting, Festivus¹ continues his rampages… And that’s good: because without him and without our progressive media who make it their duty to celebrate him loudly, we wouldn’t have many opportunities to laugh. There remain two unknowns: first of all, it is obviously impossible to know if the sun will be present above Paris to illuminate all our wonderful dancers and tightrope walkers on July 26. Then, above all, we do not yet know which Prime Minister will be alongside Emmanuel Macron during this magical ceremony.

¹ Philippe Muray