Today’s big news is the mysterious disappearance of Christopher Wheeldon’s Darcey Bussell-starring ballet from the Olympics’ closing ceremonies last night. This morning, DanceMedia editors compared notes. Had we somehow missed it? Was it a smaller production than we were led to believe? What was going on?
As it turns out, NBC edited the event, cutting out multiple performances from the evening, not the least of which included Royal Ballet legend Darcey Bussell flying in on a pyrotechnic-spewing Phoenix, accompanied by hundreds of dancers in flame-adorned costumes, a spectacle we have been looking forward to for months! I don’t think it’s fair to say that everyone in America would have been as excited to see the performance as we in the dance world would have been, but I do think it’s fair to say we all deserve a chance to decide for ourselves. After all, someone made the call that American audiences needed to see the Pet Shop Boys in conical hats performing “West End Girls.” I think we could have handled some ballerinas in flames. Fortunately, videos have begun surfacing, giving us a chance to glimpse what we missed last night.