LONDON — The details of the 2024 Paris Olympic closing ceremony have been airtight, so much so that even Arthur Cadre, the lead dancer of the ceremony, doesn’t know what’s going on most of the time.
“Even when we’re all practicing, we hear the music through the headphones given to us, so we don’t even know if we’re listening to the same song or sound,” said the French dancer in an interview.
Rehearsal sessions have been taking place in a remote and undisclosed location far outside of Paris, where many of the dancers are grouped together to train for more than six hours a day, switching between daytime and nighttime sessions.
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“Rehearsing at night can be quite hard on the body, especially if it’s going on as late as 4 a.m.,” says Cadre.
To get a place in the closing ceremony, Cadre reached out to Thomas Jolly, artistic director of the opening and closing ceremonies on Instagram, after watching his production of 1970s French rock opera “Starmania” that Nicolas Ghesquière designed the costumes for in 2022.
“Thomas proposed that I embody the main character that he has been developing for the closing ceremony. I was really thrilled and he explained the whole show [the opening and closing ceremonies] to me, which is very specific and bold to do in France,” Cadre explains.
There are more than 100 dancers working on the closing ceremony, but he only joined the project a few months ago and quickly had to play catchup before the big moment on Sunday.
“Thomas also lets me run free with my own ideas onstage as long as I’m within the storyline and within the spectrum of the show. It’s like being an actor and I’ve had to think about every single movement, from the way I walk to the range of emotions I show,” he added.
Cadre started his process for the project by creating a mood board for the fictional character given to him by Jolly and then self-taped his dancing that he later reviewed with him.
The 32-year-old dancer comes from a background of breakdancing and contortionism. In the closing ceremony, he will be performing a variety of dance genres on a large stage at Stade de France, the country’s largest stadium that’s home to the French Football Federation.
Dancing in the closing ceremony is deeply sentimental to him for a number of reasons — as a Frenchman it puts his country’s rich dance history on a world stage; it marks a rare opportunity for him to dance in his home country; breakdancing also made its debut at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“France has never really had this kind of mega show and I think the world is going to discover something they’ve never seen,” says Cadre excitedly.
His role in the affair is quite an extravagant one with even grander costumes created by the Paris-based Swiss designer Kevin Germanier.
“The costumes are challenging for me, I’ve done rehearsals in and out of them,” he added.
Cadre describes the closing ceremony as a game of traffic lights, where he needs to be alert to the live audience and the cameras following him around on the stage that takes up more than 100 meters.
Even though closing ceremonies tend to be a somber moment as it signals the Games coming to an end, the dancer believes that this time it will be different.
“Dance is an excellent way of cheering everything up,” says Cadre.
Dancing has always found its way back into his life. He auditioned on “France’s Got Talent” in 2005, which led to him participating in international breakdance competitions at the same time as he pursued his academic ambitions.
In 2014, he received his master’s degree in architecture from the University of Montreal.
“In the six years of my studies, I would sometimes miss university exams to do TV commercials in the U.S.,” says Cadre.
Despite not following through with a career in architecture, his years of studies have given him a fresh perspective on his pursuits as a choreographer and photographer, he says.