Simone Ferrari

Memories. 1. Circles 2. Trying the gestures with Macia and Lulu 3. Volunteers 4. Breathe 5. Battle between city and mountain. 6. 3d choreography will make the show perfect 7. Model of Spirito Olimpico done in the studio by Kami and Diego 8. How to Previz all your ideas 9. But in the stadium looks different 10. The map is not the territory 11. Lighting masterclasses by the one and only bruno Poet 12. Her 13. Look mom, I’m on tv. 14. Aiuto

Simone Ferrari @simoferra e Lulu Helbæk @lulu_helbek , creative directors di Balich Wonder Studio @balichwonderstudio e tra le menti dietro la Cerimonia di Apertura di #MilanoCortina2026, si raccontano tra bellezza, armonia e il ruolo dell’arte nel mondo contemporaneo. Nel loro studio milanese, parlano della notte che ha trasformato San Siro nel palcoscenico dell’Italia davanti a miliardi di persone. Ma soprattutto di ciò che oggi conta davvero: empatia, gentilezza e la capacità dell’arte di creare connessioni profonde. L’intervista di Lorenzo Villa @lorea.ll continua sul sito. Courtesy Photo Balich Wonder & Kamilla Yanbukhtina @kyanbukhtina #mANIFESTOcOLLETTIVO #marieclaireITALIA #mc

MILANO OLYMPIC FLAG BEARERS Cindy Ngamba, a refugee-turned-Olympic boxer who competed under no flag, then carried the biggest one of all. Tadatoshi Akiba, a mayor who dedicated his life to nuclear disarmament. Rebeca Andrade, the most decorated Olympian in Brazilian history. Pita Taufatofua, an island warrior who has never let the cold stop him. Eliud Kipchoge, a two-time Olympic marathon champion who redefined human limits. Nicolo Govoni, a writer and activist nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Maryam Bukar Hassan, an artist and poet named UN Global Advocate for Peace. Filippo Grandi, the former head of the UN Refugee Agency. Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Opening Ceremony Key Creative Team: @marcobalich_bws - Creative Lead Simone Ferrari - Creative Director & Deputy Creative Lead @lulu_helbek - Creative Director Damiano Michieletto - Creative Director Lida Castelli - Protocol Creative Director @paolofantindesigner - Production Designer @bruno_poet_lighting - Lighting Designer Andrea Farri - Music Director @massimocantiniparrini - Costume Designer @annalisa9275 - Executive Producer Executive & Creative Production: @balichwonderstudio

Armonia Del Futuro. To truly see something, you need distance. An astronaut is, among other things, someone who has looked down at all of us at once. Who has held the whole Earth in a single gaze and understood what it means to belong to each other. Samantha Cristoforetti is a legend. To the world. To Italy especially. Engineer, ESA commander, a woman who has lived among the stars. There is no one more perfect to guide us through our human sky. On that stage, three women from different generations, bound by the same love for science. Samantha carried the words of Margherita Hack, a fierce and luminous Italian woman who spent a lifetime teaching us to love this planet by first learning to love the cosmos. Those words, offered gently, passed to Gaia. A thread of wonder, crossing time. 108 performers. A pas de deux with the universe. And the extraordinary light of Bruno Poet, turning the air itself into something celestial. Directed by me and @lulu_helbaek Choreography @beatrice.alessi.10 @kritikididimitra @tamaracatharino Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Opening Ceremony Key Creative Team: @marcobalich_bws - Creative Lead Simone Ferrari - Creative Director & Deputy Creative Lead @lulu_helbek - Creative Director Damiano Michieletto - Creative Director Lida Castelli - Protocol Creative Director @paolofantindesigner - Production Designer @bruno_poet_lighting - Lighting Designer Andrea Farri - Music Director @massimocantiniparrini - Costume Designer @annalisa9275 - Executive Producer Executive & Creative Production: @balichwonderstudio

Directing @sabrinaimpacciatore to dance through a century of winter olympics: her energy and humanity made our idea break free, like her anarchic unashamed run into the emptiness of the stadium. She made it all sparkle, but also elevated the creative process itself. We travelled through time together and it was a joyful journey. Together with a truly wonderful team of dancers so wittily guided by @beatrice.alessi.10 , that sculpted each époque like only she could do: rich, complex, very vibrant, very ironic. Ultimately, for it to work, everything had to become a dance. The 26 technicians moving the postcard-like pop up stage by hand, costume teams sprinting through 4 waves of quick changes, every movement on stage and behind, every step of the steady cam operator - choreographed, timecoded. Until the last beat of MACE’s ‘espansione’, to whom we owe a separate shoutout. @macemilano Set Design magic by @paolofantindesigner Costumes - felt like pure cinema - by @massimocantiniparrini Directed by me and @lulu_helbek Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Opening Ceremony Key Creative Team: @marcobalich_bws - Creative Lead Simone Ferrari - Creative Director & Deputy Creative Lead @lulu_helbek - Creative Director Damiano Michieletto - Creative Director Lida Castelli - Protocol Creative Director @paolofantindesigner - Production Designer @bruno_poet_lighting - Lighting Designer Andrea Farri - Music Director @massimocantiniparrini - Costume Designer @annalisa9275 - Executive Producer Executive & Creative Production: @balichwonderstudio

The Five Olympic Rings We spent a lot of time searching for this moment, for it to be monumental, yet deeply human. Two different entities with no choice but to leap into the void to find each other. Body against body, suspended thus fragile. The leap born from the most human of all desires: to see yourself in someone else. And five rings in flight, that come together uniting the 2 worlds to move as one. And when they did, it moved us. 🙌 Segment directed by me and @lulu_helbek Choreography @bologninoadriano Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Opening Ceremony Key Creative Team: @marcobalich_bws - Creative Lead Simone Ferrari - Creative Director & Deputy Creative Lead @lulu_helbek - Creative Director Damiano Michieletto - Creative Director Lida Castelli - Protocol Creative Director @paolofantindesigner - Production Designer @bruno_poet_lighting - Lighting Designer Andrea Farri - Music Director @massimocantiniparrini - Costume Designer @annalisa9275 - Executive Producer Executive & Creative Production: @balichwonderstudio

City and Mountains, Milano and Cortina. Two natures in a choreographic dialogue. A demanding challenge we met together with Adriano Bolognino, whose physical language, so distinctive, so sharp, so sophisticated in its details, brought texture and breath to the story we were telling. Grazie @bologninoadriano @b.trice for Città e Montagna made visible through movement. Grazie @giovanni_andrea_zanon for infusing it masterfully with the voice of the Stradivari The segment directed by me and @lulu_helbek cover ph: @kyanbukhtina Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Opening Ceremony Key Creative Team: @marcobalich_bws - Creative Lead Simone Ferrari - Creative Director & Deputy Creative Lead @lulu_helbek - Creative Director Damiano Michieletto - Creative Director Lida Castelli - Protocol Creative Director @paolofantindesigner - Production Designer @bruno_poet_lighting - Lighting Designer Andrea Farri - Music Director @massimocantiniparrini - Costume Designer @annalisa9275 - Executive Producer Executive & Creative Production: @balichwonderstudio

E come il vento. And like the wind. Lighter than remembered, Pierfranceso Favino pronounces words every italian already knows. And the stadium holds still. Grazie @pierfrancescofavino Segment directed by me & Lulu Helbaek Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Opening Ceremony Key Creative Team: @marcobalich_bws - Creative Lead Simone Ferrari - Creative Director & Deputy Creative Lead @lulu_helbek - Creative Director Damiano Michieletto - Creative Director Lida Castelli - Protocol Creative Director @paolofantindesigner - Production Designer @bruno_poet_lighting - Lighting Designer Andrea Farri - Music Director @massimocantiniparrini - Costume Designer @annalisa9275 - Executive Producer Executive & Creative Production: @balichwonderstudio

Rehearsals bring a rare and fragile beauty, micro moments, unexpected, the magic. 180 bodies move in unison, while the only sound in the room is breath.

How do you speak about peace when every word seems superfluous? Avoiding rhetoric, simple emotion, a wrong word. We reflected on it for a long time. Then @lulu_helbek , after weeks of research, arrived with the solution, so natural, so right, almost to the point of seeming obvious. So I defer to her words, which are, as often happens, clearer than mine. “Taking inspiration from the words of Gianni Rodari, we returned to the foundations of our shared humanity. We felt the need to begin again with simple, elementary words. Rhyming phrases that call for peace not as a song, but as something real and tangible. Like a mantra that settles under the skin. Staging a hymn for Peace is difficult. Difficult to create something meaningful and necessary, something that can be understood in every corner of the world, without sounding rhetorical or embarrassing, in this historical moment marked by conflict and abuses inflicted on the most vulnerable. His poetry is a reminder, almost a warning, to the community of adults who keep forgetting they were once children.” Then we worked through movement. @macia.delprete brought a fresh choreographic approach, building a vocabulary of gestures that could be understood everywhere. Eighty dancers under twenty gave the piece its youthful energy, with @ghali moving among them and reciting Gianni Rodari’s words. For a moment a dove appeared, formed by their bodies, then dissolved into the air, fragile as peace itself. Finally Charlize Theron crossed the stage with quiet elegance, recalling the words of Nelson Mandela. Segment directed by me & Lulu Helbaek Choreography: Macia Del Prete Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Opening Ceremony Key Creative Team: @marcobalich_bws - Creative Lead Simone Ferrari - Creative Director & Deputy Creative Lead @lulu_helbek - Creative Director Damiano Michieletto - Creative Director Lida Castelli - Protocol Creative Director @paolofantindesigner - Production Designer @bruno_poet_lighting - Lighting Designer Andrea Farri - Music Director @massimocantiniparrini - Costume Designer @annalisa9275 - Executive Producer Executive & Creative Production: @balichwonderstudio

Gianni Rodari | 1920–1980 Primary school teacher, journalist, poet, writer. With The Grammar of Fantasy and Telephone Tales he revolutionized Italian children's literature. In 1970 he won the Andersen Award: the Nobel Prize of children's books. He believed that imagination was a tool for freedom and critical thinking. @lulu_helbek

Fantasia Italiana Everything everywhere all at once. Leonardo and Pinocchio, the Colosseum and the Duomo, the Monna Lisa and the stylists. Matilda De Angelis and Mariah Carey. (Or were they the same person?) Puccini, Verdi and Rossini dancing together, waiting for Raffaella Carrà. Roman centurions, Venetian masks, chefs, and coffee mokas, many mokas. All bathed in three primary colours that give life to the Italian Fantasia. 240 volunteers, 36 dancers, 30 colour shades, 3 giant tubes, much irony, much Italy. FEH-LEE-CHAY D STAR EH-LA-SUE Segment directed by Damiano Michieletto Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Opening Ceremony Key Creative Team: @marcobalich_bws - Creative Lead Simone Ferrari - Creative Director & Deputy Creative Lead @lulu_helbek - Creative Director Damiano Michieletto - Creative Director Lida Castelli - Protocol Creative Director @paolofantindesigner - Production Designer @bruno_poet_lighting - Lighting Designer Andrea Farri - Music Director @massimocantiniparrini - Costume Designer @annalisa9275 - Executive Producer Executive & Creative Production: @balichwonderstudio