More than 20 top French DJs will perform at the closing ceremony of the Paralympics in Paris on Sunday 8 September, giving pride of place to electronic music.
The line-up at the National Stadium in Paris on Sunday night includes “French Touch” legends Cassius and Kavinsky, alongside globetrotting electro star Martin Solveig and newer dancefloor favorites Ofenbach. “You can imagine it like the biggest nightclub in France,” Thomas Jolly, artistic director of the Paris 2024 ceremony, told reporters in Paris on Friday.
The hour-long set, which will feature 24 DJs on stage, each mixing a track, will be opened and closed by French electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre, 76. “He’s our father, our boss,” DJ Agoria told reporters in Paris. “I’m glad he’s going to be a kind of orchestra conductor.”
France is a global hotbed of the dance music scene, but Sunday’s show won’t exactly feature the country’s crème de la crème of performers. There are no performances scheduled for Daft Punk or veterans Laurent Garnier and Bob Sinclar, and Jolly has publicly feuded with David Guetta, who expressed frustration at not being invited to perform at the Olympics opening ceremony on July 26.
Sunday’s closing ceremony to mark the end of the Paralympics in Paris will attempt to push artistic boundaries. Part of the music show will celebrate the drug-fuelled rave scene and culture of the 1980s and ’90s. The ceremony will also see the extinguishing of the Olympic cauldron and a symbolic handover from Paris to Los Angeles, where the next Games will be held in 2028.
The Paris Olympics have been widely hailed as a triumph of organisation and design, with the French capital adopting a new model in which the majority of sporting events will be held in temporary stadiums in the heart of the historic city.
Chief organiser Tony Estanguet said Sunday’s ceremony would be a celebration of the sportsmen and women who have made the Games shine over the past six weeks. “The idea is to finish with a big party that will prevent the tears of those who might say to themselves: ‘Damn it, it’s all over,'” he said. “No, we’re going to have a party and then maybe be disappointed on Monday because then it really will be all over.”
