Leamington man behind Paralympic opening ceremony

Buy photos » Leamington’s Kevin Finnan choreographed the Paralympic Opening Ceremony last night. (s)

THE London 2012 Paralympic opening ceremony last night (Wednesday) was choreographed by a Leamington theatre founder.

Kevin Finnan, 55, has lived in the town since 1985 when he moved here to dance for New Midlands Dance Company.

And in his role as choreographer and director of movement, Kevin was tasked with putting together the paralympic equivalent of Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony.

The 55-year-old has more than 30 years' experience working in the industry and 25 years' choreographing having co-founded Motionhouse, one of the UK's foremost dance theatre companies.

Kevin has worked on many exciting collaborations with artists from a full spectrum of disciplines and from all corners of the globe and was delighted to be chosen for this once-in-a-lifetime role.

He said: "It was daunting and thrilling to be part of and it was very interesting to see how things were made on this scale.

"It's not often that you get an opportunity to work at such a size, and it's great to see how things learned in little workshops with small groups of people are scaled up to work with hundreds, even thousands at a time.

"For me, the fundamentals were constantly having to be adapted and developed and I learnt a lot of new things and new techniques. It was extraordinary."

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