Outdoor innovation

It’s a first-ever non-stadium event: 94 barges floating 10,500 athletes down the Seine at sunset, east to west, 3.7 miles from Pont d’Austerlitz to Pont d’Iéna. It’s under the artistic direction of award-winning French theatre director Thomas Jolly. “This has never been done outside a stadium,” he says. “There is no model, this is absolute creation.”

Stomps, shouts and body rolls

Three thousand dancers will deliver a reported mix of “urban, contemporary, classic and break, complete with stomps, shouts, and body rolls”. Organisers say it’ll make for “an unprecedented experience, using the natural light of the setting sun with all its nuances to illuminate the river promenade”. Dancer Sharlyne Say, 22, says performing for a 1.5bn global TV audience is “my dream come true.” “It’ll be crazy,” she added, “because I’m not used to dancing outside”.

High fashion

Expect costumes by Louis Vuitton, Dior and others, primped by 200 dressers. There are 288 hair and makeup artists also on staff. 

Expectation management

It’ll be, say organisers, “bold, original, unique” – but it’s not going to be on the scale Jolly had in mind when he first started planning. A vision for 200 ballet dancers on a bridge was cancelled when safety experts warned it could bring the bridge down; a design for an upside-down Eiffel Tower to hold the flame was nixed as “not doable”; E coli in the water disrupted rehearsals; and a plan to host 700,000 spectators in line with the “Games Wide Open” motto was halved due to security fears. There’s also still the prospect of …

Moving the whole thing to the Stade de France

This is a last-resort back-up plan in case a rising terrorism threat level forces the ceremony out of Paris entirely. Emmanuel Macron said in April “we have fallback scenarios, plan Bs and plan Cs”. Around 45,000 security officers will be deployed and the airspace and all airports within a 90-mile radius will be closed for the duration. Olympic organising committee head Étienne Thobois remains upbeat, though. “My job is to be worried,” he said in June. “But I’m 99.99% sure that this is going to happen.”