2018 Asian Games: Segment in closing ceremony introduces Chinese city as next host

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With the Asian Games coming to an end, the closing ceremony will feature an eight-minute performance to introduce the host of the next Games in 2022: Hangzhou. Damion Jones has more on how the Chinese city will present itself.

Sunday night's eight-minute show dubbed "Hangzhou Time" has a limited window to introduce the unique characteristics of the host city for the 2022 Asian Games, meaning a lot of creative effort will go into telling the story.

CHEN WEIYA GENERAL ART DIRECTOR "We want to tell the world that China has entered a new era, and Hangzhou is here to welcome the world in its most beautiful state. We want to impress the world with the city's beauty, its passion, and its attractiveness entering a new era, to make them want to come and visit this exciting city."

The creative team has a clear view of what they want to achieve, but faces a lot of difficulties in doing so. The stage for the closing ceremony will mostly be occupied by athletes, leaving just a little bit of space for the introductory performance.

"Time is limited, and the stage that is given us to perform is also very limited, so the content of the show must not be overwhelming. Facing these problems, we have to approach the task skillfully, so the most important thing is creativity."

After a lot of discussions, the staff came up with an innovative idea to pull together the content of the performance, and its manner of presentation, and at the center of their idea is technology.

"The entire creative process is very hard, because it is completely original. At the start, we had absolutely no idea how to achieve it, but then our art designers thought of building intelligent dancing screens. Basically we've created five intelligent dancing robots."

CHEN YAN SCENIC DESIGN DIRECTOR "The entire process is very, very difficult. To be honest, we took a chance, and we were very brave. Now that I think about it, I might look very calm, but we really took a risk. But in the end we did it, and it's a perfect combination of art and technology."

High technology often comes with risks, of course, and although the closing segment's creative team had impeccable final rehearsals in Hangzhou, the hardest step was disassembling the robots, and transporting them to Jakarta. But they say the move went well, and now hope Sunday night's performance will follow suit. DJ, CGTN.