The wizard of Oz

Olympic Games ceremonies maestro Ric Birch is leading a creative workshop in Beijing and his young Chinese students are hanging onto his every word. The Australian asks about the biggest change since China's opening up policy and economic miracle.

There is a long pause.

"Now you can buy bicycles in any color," one young man innocently explains.

"Before, bicycles were black, gray or blue but now there's yellow and orange ... any color you want."

Birch did not see that answer coming, but says it reveals the baffling complexity of the Chinese mindset, which Western critics often fail to understand.

"I often think of this when I hear a Western commentator making pronouncements about China - the reality is that significant change takes longer than one generation," Birch says.

"The fact that China has achieved so much in one generation is so extraordinary that we can't compute it. There has never been an equivalent, so we don't have any bench marks."

Birch, the brains behind the largest and some of the most successful live productions ever mounted, says all these issues of rapid change will "come together for me" in the Beijing Games opening ceremony.

Birch is in the Chinese capital this week once again, as advisor to Beijing ceremonies ringmaster and legendary movie maker Zhang Yimou. Dress rehearsals will begin on June 10.

Without revealing any secrets of the opening ceremony, he promises the world will be "gobsmacked".

"Sorry, but I'm not sure how to say that in Putonghua," he jokes.

Zhang is the major creative force behind the opening while Birch advises on specialists for technical and design roles in the Beijing Games opening and closing ceremonies. It is a specialized type of work, which was not exactly taught at the law school Birch attended in his younger days.

Birch's knack at putting on a show was revealed during the spectacular opening and closing of the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games. It attracted the highest TV ratings in Australian history and led to his success at the opening ceremonies for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.

After LA, the former rock and roll singer formed Spectak Productions, an events management company, which now has offices in Los Angeles, Sydney and Milan. He has consulted for theme park developments in Hong Kong, Japan, Spain and France, and dazzled at the 1990 World Expo in Osaka, the 1992 Universal Exposition in Sevilla, and the 1995 Exposition in Vienna.

In 1990, Birch directed the Singapore Jubilee Spectacular - a multi-million dollar production with a cast of 15,000 performers to celebrate 25 years of the city-state's independence. He was appointed executive producer for the opening and closing ceremonies in Barcelona the following year, with its unforgettable scene of an archer firing an arrow and lighting the Olympic flame.

For more than two decades, Birch was responsible for the creative concepts, planning, organization, budgets, and the selection of personnel for these huge events. He would form international teams, which would continue to top the previous Olympic ceremonies efforts.

But the Sydney 2000 was the jewel in Birch's crown.

Many hailed the Sydney Olympic opening ceremonies as establishing new standards for creativity, performance and technical production. The Olympic cauldron rose from a large pool and was lit by Aboriginal Australian Kathy Freeman, who later went on to win the 400m gold medal. The ceremony featured a "Dreamtime" indigenous theme of an ancient land, in which the Sydney stadium was transformed into a huge desert.

Performers were magically transported through the air, just like in many kungfu films, and the amazing ceremony cemented Birch's global reputation as the master of ceremonies.

He returns to Beijing this week, as he has many times over the past three years, and is focused on the Middle Kingdom.

"I am overwhelmed by China's two decades of achievements, which were inconceivable back then," he says.

"The Olympic Games represent many human ideals, some of which China has achieved and some of which are unfulfilled, but the way in which China has embraced the Olympics is unparalleled.

"There are Western countries that do not achieve or maintain these same Olympic ideals, so in itself this is not the measure of the success of the Beijing Olympics."

Birch says the speed of China's social progress compared to any other country is the true measure of success and many Beijing Games protesters do not understand the full story.

"Protesters seem to expect China to behave like a sophisticated, media savvy nation, equivalent on every level to Western, participatory democracies because it has made such giant strides, so quickly," he says.

"But no nation in the history of the world has changed its social system so fast or successfully. Think of Russia in 1917, the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1989, the American Civil War or even China's own history between 1920 and 1948."

Birch has worked with every nationality and describes Chinese production crews very similar in talent and temperament, compared with other international teams.

"Except they are far more polite to me," he jokes.

"There is a clearly defined creative hierarchy, without the freewheeling opinions, questions and suggestions in Australia or US, but this is a reflection of the broader Chinese culture."

Several of his team members have studied and lived in Australia and understand their Asia-Pacific neighbor, he says, but he believes most Chinese are not concerned about the rest of the world, "except as spectators to Chinese achievements".

"There is an enormous pride and even amazement at the economic changes in their lives and right now I get the feeling that no Chinese person wants to be anywhere else other than China," he says.

Despite the large contingent of foreigners helping with the Games, Birch has witnessed a commitment among Olympic workers he has never seen before.

"I realized that several members of the creative unit were living on the premises," he says.

"Two of them had moved from New York to Beijing to be part of the Olympics and were working without pay. All they wanted was to contribute their skills to the ceremonies, so they lived in the office building.

"This level of dedication is hard to compete with."

(China Daily 05/28/2008 page18)