“Creating dreams is a serious profession” and this is how Marco Balich assumes that he makes a living. It was your idea to put the Pink Floyd performing on a floating stage in the city of Venice, where he was born, in 1989. This Sunday, the entire opening ceremony of the World Cup in Qatar, which took place at the Al-Bayt Stadium, was signed by this artistic director, a specialist in large-format events.
If managing the 900 people who participated in this show seems like a Herculean challenge, Marco Balich has shown the ability to get the job done. The experiences he gained over the years helped. In 2016, at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, He had to command 900 people who participated, behind the scenes, in the opening ceremony of the eclectic competition and also 12,000 dancers and choreographers.???????? To get an idea of the size of the events he manages as executive director, the logistics of the Rio event meant that three factories had to dedicate themselves exclusively, for six months, to the manufacture of 12,000 pairs of shoes. that the participants used.
Shows like the one he performed in Brazil are the daily life of Marco Balich, who was responsible for the ceremonies of a record 14 Olympic Games. It began in 2002, at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, and is responsible for the ceremonies for the 2024 Paris Olympics. His specialization in large-scale events, which he says takes two years to prepare, earned him an Emmy, in 2006, and a Compasso d’Oro (award for design industrial), in 2017.
In all the events organized by Marco Balich there is a common denominator, the emotion that unites millions of people. “Emotion is the key to a beautiful experience and emotions are a social moment. You cannot have a moment of pure joy alone ”, he confessed in an interview, in September, with Alain Elkann. In a presentation at the place from the company Balich Wonder Studio, adds: “We believe that emotions are the essence of our identity and we express our identity in everything we do.”
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He uses the sentiment to animate the sporting events he celebrates, but the inspiration comes from other areas. “On Holy Week, Pope Francis celebrated a Mass for an empty plaza. He was alone, but we all felt that he was strong. It was emotional. He was taking a position. An old man sitting in a chair doing Easter blessings was something that moved me and I’m not particularly religious. It is the perfect example of what you need to do something special. That’s why sporting events are the only thing the young generation watches on TV, because regardless of whether it’s Formula 1, football or the Olympics, what you’re watching is actually happening there, right now.”
By force of circumstances, the controversies surrounding this year’s World Cup ended up dividing rather than uniting. Marco Balich admitted, in the aforementioned interview with Alain Elkann, that promoting a show of this type always aims to “make the country that hosts the competition proud and disseminate cultural values and symbols”. To the newspaper Marca, about the opening of the World Cup, the artistic director said that The criticism of Qatar is “fair”, but that “we must appreciate the country’s effort to show itself to the world???????? “Qatar wants to tell the world that it preserves its traditions, but that the country looks to the future”, guaranteeing that “football unites rich and poor”.
Source: Observadora
