Paris goes for golden light show in final act

It was a dreamlike, science fiction-inspired, light-show spectacular.

- Angelique Chrisafis

Paris closed its record-breakingly successful Olympic games last night with a ceremony in which a mysterious, golden, intergalactic traveller lands in a gloomy, futuristic barren land, tasked with resurrecting the Olympic spirit.

With ghostly dancers and acrobatics descending from the stadium roof and performing on giant Olympic rings - and a musician suspended in flight, playing a piano hanging vertically in the air - Paris delivered a dramatic closing ceremony, whose message was the importance of protecting the spirit of the games in an uncertain world.

The dramatic pyrotechnic show was a fitting riposte to the epic, technicolour, riverside opening-ceremony that broke with tradition by taking place along the Seine two weeks earlier.

"Humanity is beautiful when it comes together," said the theatre and opera director, Thomas Jolly, of his stadium show of acrobatics, music and dancing. He said it was about celebrating "respect and tolerance" in a fragile world.

He called the games and the closing performance "a unique opportunity to share, reconcile and repair".

The ceremony opened beneath Paris's ground-breaking Olympic cauldron suspended from a balloon, a dramatic ring of fire which is in fact made up of electricity and LED spotlight to give the appearance of being ablaze.

The balloon-cauldron has become the city's newest star attraction as thousands have gathered near the Louvre to watch it rise into the sky each night at sundown, and politicians are arguing that it should be kept in Paris permanently as a new landmark.