By Victória Oliveira
A lot of people have been speculating about the disappointing opening show of the FIFA world cup 2014. What most of these people don’t know is that Brazilian choreographers weren’t hired to choreograph the show. Instead FIFA hired the Italian choreographer Franco Dragone (known from his work with Cirque du Soleil) as the artistic director and Brazilian choreographers were not a part of the team that created the production.
Most Brazilians agree that the show didn’t represent Brazil’s history at all. It was not more than an outsider’s view on Brazil. After overseeing the failure of the opening ceremony, FIFA didn’t clarify that they were the responsible for the show which lead the Brazilian president, Dilma Roussef, to be booed in the stadium and become a joke on the internet.
So why didn’t FIFA open an opportunity for Brazilian choreographers to express themselves and everything they know about the country they live in? Apparently because for FIFA the world cup belongs to FIFA and it just happened to be headquartered in Brazil.
There were also all sorts of problems during the preparation for the World Cup, for instance, Dragone and the president of FIFA (Sepp Blatter) took too long to set Dragone’s payment and after it was all set Dragone’s said that 500 days to put a show together wasn’t enough, then Jennifer Lopez said she wasn’t going to participate anymore but changed her mind at the last minute, the registration for volunteers was closed before they had as many volunteers as they needed and they had to reopen it and last but not least it was disclosed that the show had to be shorter because there wasn’t enough money for a longer show.
Now how does FIFA, in all of their years of experience put together such a mediocre show? Most people guess that they wanted to generate so much profit that they chose not to care about quality. What’s your opinion about it?
Living in Brazil, Victória Oliveira has worked for influential brands, blogs and magazines like Dormify, Potterish, Blogócios, Rock Revolt Magazine, Inspiring Women Magazine, Conscious Magazine, myEstilo, Elegant Magazine and now The Culture-ist. She is a passionate feminist and is interested in everything art-related. Make sure to check out her blog: http://vlivingthefashion.tumblr.com/ and follow her on twitter: @VOliveiraTweets
Feature photo by Jon Le-Bon / Shutterstock.com