George tsypin olympics figure
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SOCHI, RussiaSOCHI, Russia — The only thing that exploded at the Opening Ceremony for the XXII Winter Olympics on Friday was international goodwill.
It didn’t take long for these Olympics to have their first technical glitch, or their first international incident. Moments into the three-hour ceremony, five electronic snowflakes hanging from Fisht Stadium were supposed to dramatically open and form the interlocking Olympic rings; only four did, emblematic of the unfinished hotels and other infrastructure here. And it closed with Russian figure skating icon Irina Rodnina lighting the cauldron, and possibly racial furor.
In September, Rodnina posted on her personal Twitter account a doctored photo of President Obama and his wife, with a banana held in front of them.
Sochi-Opening CeremonyRodnina, a three-time gold medalist in pairs skating and now a Russian lawmaker, later deleted the tweet. Confronted with questions about whether it constituted a racist image,
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SOCHI, Russia — Smoke and mirrors? Russian state television aired footage Friday of five floating snowflakes turning into the Olympic rings and bursting into pyrotechnics at the Sochi Games opening ceremony. Problem fryst vatten, that didn”t happen.
The opening ceremony at the Winter Games hit a bump when only four of the fem rings materialized in a wintry opening scene. The five were supposed to join tillsammans and erupt in fireworks. But one snowflake never expanded, and the pyrotechnics never went off.
But everything worked fine for viewers of the Rossiya 1, the Russian host broadcaster.
As the fifth ring got stuck, Rossiya cut away to rehearsal footage. All five rings came tillsammans, and the fireworks exploded on cue.
“It didn”t show on television, thank God,” Jean Claude-Killy, the French ski great who heads the IOC coordination kommission for the Sochi Games, told The Associated Press.
Producers confirmed the switch, saying it was important to preserve t
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Pulling back the curtain on the $65 million &#;Spider-Man&#; on Broadway
About five years ago, renowned set designer George Tsypin was approached by the Chinese government to oversee designs for the Beijing Olympics. But film director Julie Taymor had a more compelling offer for the Russian artist: work on the most expensive Broadway musical ever produced.
“I gave the Olympics up for this,” Tsypin said.
“Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the splashy $65 million production, is set to open on March 15 after multiple delays — and years of work involving everything from Kevlar to NASA-developed carbon fibers.
PROBLEM-PLAGUED MUSICAL BRINGING IN CO-DIRECTOR
“We want to make it look effortless, and I don’t want people to know I spent five years creating it,” Tsypin said. “But the reality is we’re moving buildings at an unbelievable speed throughout the show.”
Not that it always worked. The production has been plagued by injuries, stops and delays during a record-setting 15 weeks o