2014 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics took place at the Fisht Olympic Stadium in Sochi, Russia, on 7 February 2014. It began at 20:14 MSK (UTC+4) and finished at 23:02 MSK (UTC+4). It was filmed and produced by OBS and Russian host broadcaster VGTRK. This was the first Winter Olympics and first Olympic Games opening ceremony under the IOC presidency of Thomas Bach. This was also the second consecutive Winter Olympic opening ceremony to be held in an indoor stadium.

The Games were officially opened by President Vladimir Putin. An audience of 40,000 were in attendance at the stadium with an estimated 2,000 performers.

Preparations

The site of the opening ceremony, Fisht Olympic Stadium was built specifically for the games. Fisht Stadium seats 40,000. No Olympic or Paralympic competitions were held there; it was only used for the opening and closing ceremonies during the respective Games. Television producer Konstantin Ernst was the main Creative Head in charge of the opening ceremonies. Andrei Nasonovsky was the Executive Producer of record; and Andrei Boltenko was the writer and director of the ceremony. A different team was in charge of the Closing Ceremony as well as the Paralympic ceremonies.

Programme

Pre-ceremony activities included performances by the Russian pop duo t.A.T.u. and the Ministry of Internal Affairs choir, who performed a version of Daft Punk's " Get Lucky".

Opening section

Dreams of Russia

The ceremony, opened with an on-screen video showing 11-year-old Liza Temnikova playing a character named Lyubov (Russian for 'love') reciting the Russian alphabet. Each letter is associated with images of a famous Russian person or landmark. Many of the letters features some of Russia's most famous writers such as Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and countless others that have impacted Russian history, culture, literature, and philosophy.

Lyubov then flew into the air as she dreamed of grabbing the tail of a kite and being lifted far off the stage. Nine different floats, carrying Russian landscapes, passed beneath her as she slept.

Five large snowflakes descended into the stadium which expanded and joined to form the Olympic rings. However, a technical error caused the fifth ring not to expand, and pyrotechnics did not go off from the rings. The mishap was later self-mocked by the organizers at the closing ceremony where one of the roundrelay dance groups symbolizing the Olympic rings "failed" to expand.

Anthems

The Sretensky Monastery men's choir sang the Russian National Anthem, while 240 volunteers stood in formation wearing glowing suits of white, red, and blue to represent the Russian flag. The Russian flag bearers were a detachment of cosmonauts — Fyodor Yurchikhin (who returned from space with the torch), Roman Romanenko, Svetlana Savitskaya and Yelena Serova – and the flag was raised by Sergei Krikalev. The volunteers moved up and down to create a waving flag motion.

Parade of Nations

The Parade of Nations was led, according to custom due to hosting the original ancient Olympics, by the Greek team, followed by other competing countries in alphabetical order based on their names in the Russian language, with the host country, Russia, culminating the march. Athletes were then seated in the lower level of the stadium's stands. A projected rendering of the Earth showing each competing country (along with their names in English, French and Russian, respectively) was displayed on the stadium floor as they entered. The parade was accompanied with a soundtrack by Russian electronic dance music producer Leonid Rudenko, which featured remixes of popular Russian music.

Mascots

After the Parade of Nations entered, the three mascots of the Games come out and walk on an ice-based shaping rink LED of the stadium. The hare is an alpine skier, the leopard and the polar bear are the skiers using skating rink shoes. The mascots bow quickly then head off for the next segment.

Performances

The opening ceremony focused heavily on classical music and large scale productions. Performances journeyed through Russian history through the eyes of a little girl called Lyubov ("Love"), played by Liza Temnikova, touching on Russia's art, music, and ballet. The Russian history presentation was ushered in by a brightly-lit troika of three horses followed by a red sun. Performances included the building of St Basil's Cathedral, represented by colourful inflatable sculptures, and 17th century czar Peter the Great building an army as Russia transitioned from medieval times to the 20th century. Czar Peter's marching cadets (160 male dancers) moved from a map of the St Petersburg projected on the stadium floor to an imperial ball inspired by Leo Tolstoy's ''War and Peace'', and featuring ballet dancers including Danila Korsuntsev, Ivan Vasiliev, and Svetlana Zakharova. The ball included music by Aleksander Sergeyevich Zatsepin and ended with the fifth movement (Rondo) of Alfred Schnittke's ''Concerto Grosso No. 1''.

Fourteen columns rose from the floor, then disappeared, replaced first by scenes of the Russian Revolution and Soviet industrialization, followed by a giant moving reproduction of the famous statue ''Worker and Kolkhoz Woman'' made by Vera Mukhina in 1937, with hammer and sickle flying over the arena, symbolising the period of great industrialisation following the Bolshevik Revolution.
Dozens of men carried rockets and the name of Yuri Gagarin appeared on the floor, followed up skyscrapers emerging against a background of modern typography.

The organizing committee initially wanted to include scenes of Soviet victory in the World War Two, but the IOC protested and the plans were abandoned.

Putin declared the games open, followed by a performance of ''Swan Lake'' in which the Swans, holding strands of blue LED lights, transformed into the Dove of Peace, a traditional Olympic symbol. Prima ballerina Diana Vishneva was among those who performed.

Many performers wore white to symbolise peace. More than 3,000 performers and 2,000 volunteers took part in the show. 10,000 people in all helped organise and execute the ceremonies. 120 projectors and 2.6 million lumens turned the stadium floor into a 3D, moving landscape.

Oath and torch lighting

The Olympic flag was brought into the stadium with eight flag bearers: Chulpan Khamatova, Lidiya Skoblikova, Anastasia Popova, Valentina Tereshkova, Viacheslav Fetisov, Valery Gergiev, Alan Enileev and Nikita Mikhalkov. During the flag raising, opera singer Anna Netrebko later sang the Olympic Anthem in Russian.

The Olympic Oath on behalf of all athletes was taken by Ruslan Zakharov (Short-track), Vyacheslav Vedenin

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