Opening Sequence
The Opening ceremony began with a twenty-eight second countdown—one second per Olympics held since Athens last hosted the first modern games—paced by the sounds of an amplified heartbeat played by two drummers, one inside the stadium, and one projected on the stadium screen from the ancient stadium of Olympia, the locale of the Olympic games of antiquity. A blazing projectile, seemingly coming from the ancient stadium of Olympia on the screen, lands on the flooded stadium. According to Dimitris Papaioannou, the event "was a pageant of traditional Greek culture and history harkening back to its mythological beginnings, and viewed through the progression of Greek art." The dramatic music that accompanied the performances often combined drumming with the traditionally Greek sound of bouzouki.
Read more about this topic: 2004 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony
Famous quotes containing the words opening and/or sequence:
“Haven’t you heard, though,
About the ships where war has found them out
At sea, about the towns where war has come
Through opening clouds at night with droning speed
Further o’erhead than all but stars and angels
And children in the ships and in the towns?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)