News: Festival of the Flames - Paralympic Closing Ceremony

As in the preceding three Olympic Ceremonies, dance played a prominent role in the Paralympic Closing Ceremony on Sunday.
Kim Gavin, who directed the Olympics Closing Ceremony also directed The Festival of Flames. Celebrating fire – a symbol of beginnings and endings and Britain’s tradition of festivals, it had a central theme of the four seasons.

Twelve dancers from Candoco – the leading London based integrated dance company took part in the Autumn section, with choreography set to Coldplay’s Yellow. Dancer Annie Hanauer said:

“The energy and atmosphere of dancing in front of 80,000 people plus those watching at home, alongside world-famous musical acts, with fireworks, fountains, acrobats, skaters, surreal creatures, mad moving junkyard sculptures, all in celebration of a group of fantastically talented athletes who have worked so hard and accomplished so much….I can’t really describe it!”
Read more on the Candoco blog

Model and dancer Viktoria Modesta, played the Snow Queen in the Winter section wearing a Swarovski prosthetic leg and performing with the main skating cast from ITV’s Dancing On Ice. Watch video clip

Brazil – the host country for the next Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2016 – presented a flamboyant dance display which included hip hop, capoeira, regional dance styles and ballet. Batalha do passinho is a mixture of hip-hop freestyle and samba dancing that has taken over the favelas of Rio. Frevo and parafuso are regional dance styles from the northeast of Brazil. Performers included wheelchair dancers from the integrated dance group Corpo em Movimento and ballet dancers from The Associação de Ballet e Artes para Cegos Fernanda Bianchini – the only dance school for the visually impaired in Brazil – were joined by Royal Ballet Principals Thiago Soares and Roberta Marques – both from Brazil.