Tokyo Olympics: Opening ceremony will be ‘sobering’ show, not flashy; check TV timings in India

Rising COVID-19 cases in Tokyo have cast a large shadow over an event that, having already been postponed last year because of the pandemic, will now take place without spectators.

Forget the mass choreography, the huge props and the cornucopia of dancer, actors and lights associated with an Olympic Games opening ceremony. Tokyo’s grand opening on Friday (July 23) will have none of that splendour or grandiosity. Instead it will be a scaled down affair, a ‘sobering’ performance, Marco Balich, longtime opening ceremonies executive producer, and now a senior advisor to the Tokyo ceremonies executive producer, told news agency Reuters in an interview. “It will be a much more sobering ceremony. Nevertheless with beautiful Japanese aesthetics. Very Japanese but also in sync with the sentiment of today, the reality,” Balich, who was in charge of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, said. “We have to do our best to complete this unique and hopefully the only one of its kind Olympics.” Rising COVID-19 cases in Tokyo have cast a large shadow over an event that, having already been postponed last year because of the pandemic, will now take place without spectators.