Olympic Topiary
France’s great formal gardening heritage features in the Paris 2024 opening ceremony
By Elizabeth Hilliard
Has topiary become an Olympic sport? EBTS members who watched television coverage of the Seine pageant of boats carrying athletes competing in the Games, part of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, will have been delighted to notice the inclusion of elements of formal gardening, complete with spiral topiaries and populated by costumed dancers and acrobats, on rafts on the left bank of the river opposite the clearly visible Bateaux Mouches terminus.
The Olympics’ opening ceremony, which mostly took place along the Seine, was entitled ‘Ça Ira’, and consisted of ‘twelve artistic tableaux’:
- Enchanté
- Synchronicity
- Liberty
- Equality
- Fraternity
- Sisterhood
- Sportsmanship
- Festivity
- Darkness
- Solidarity
- Solemnity (raising the flag – upside down, as it happens)
- Eternity (the Eiffel Tower light show)
Topiary and formal gardens appeared in section 7: Sportsmanship. This was preceded by scene 6: Sisterhood (ten huge golden statues of historic Frenchwomen rising out of massive plinths in the river) and scene 8 (the final tableau on the river): Festivity, subtitled ‘United in Diversity’. Images from this latter section of the river pageant were sufficiently extraordinary to provide headlines which, to put it mildly, somewhat overshadowed the gardening theme we’d just witnessed; images memorably including ‘Papa Smurf’ (AKA Dionysis, or perhaps Bacchus), a tubby blue god lying on a fruit platter, and the ‘last supper’ scene which caused such controversy and, on the basis that it made a mockery of a key religious event, outrage to Christians.
Back to topiary. I have succeeded in obtaining a copy of the press briefing document provided to broadcasters by the Paris 2024 Olympics media team, and here reproduce for you extracts from the text referring to section 7: Sportsmanship, which is where we saw parterres and topiary (though the word ‘topiary’ was mentioned neither in the television coverage nor in the text of the media pack). I include a photograph taken with my phone of the television screen, so not a brilliant shot, but you get the idea. The press pack includes two splendid aerial shots of the topiary platforms described below, but my appeal to the media office for these to be supplied to me for our website has thus far fallen on deaf ears.
Television coverage of section 7: Sportsmanship, in sub-sections named ‘Across the Gardens’ and ‘Breaking and Baroque’, took place between the Invalides and Alma bridges, lasted nine minutes and ten seconds, and featured boats transporting 19 delegations of athletes from (in alphabetical order) Japan to Madagascar (Across the Gardens) and a further 24 (Breaking and Baroque) from Malasia to Norway.
The press pack offers the following notes:
- For the first time, an Olympic Games opening ceremony is moving out of the stadium and into the heart of the host city, Paris, with the river as the main backdrop…
- The journey through France’s history continues in this next sequence [7: Sportmanship], showcasing its relationship with modern sports. The delegations pass between floating platforms resembling French formal gardens, where a live show celebrates urban sports, some of which are a special feature of the programme of the Paris 2024 Games. Thomas Jolly [the opening ceremony artistic director] offers us an experience designed to enrich our imaginations and help us reappropriate immutable figures of France through disciplines that are rooted in their times. In his desire to share the splendour of Versailles with everyone and to combine historical classicism with urban modernity, Thomas Jolly decided to invite an artist, who is both a breaker and an opera singer
- The Chateau of Versailles is surrounded by magnificent French formal gardens designed by André le Nôtre, characterised by their rigorous geometry, flowerbeds and fountains. During the Games, this venue hosts the Equestrian and Modern Pentathlon competitions
- Versailles Chateau was built in the 17th century under the direction of King Louis XIV. Initially, it was a hunting lodge located outside Paris. Over the years, the chateau was extended and transformed into a sumptuous palace. The work was carried out by renowned architects including Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin-Mansart. Versailles became the symbol of absolute power of the French monarchy. Louis XIV established his court there in 1682, which led to the decentralisation of power from Paris
- Le Nôtre’s gardens, characterised by rigorous symmetry and extensive perspective, are typical of the French classical style. They feature geometric parterres, straight paths, fountains and reflecting pools, like those at Versailles
- Five floating platforms have been set up for this sequence [scene 7 of the River Seine pageant in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games opening ceremony], held in place in the middle of the Seine by 90 ballasts (mooring blocks) weighing between 1 and 5 tonnes each, and custom-made mooring lines. A team of divers was responsible for installing the anchoring systems, including submersible electric cables. Eight months of preparation (technical studies, preparation, construction), then one month of assembly were required to prepare this tableau
