The Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Milan delivered a high-profile mix of pageantry and pop culture for a global audience, including the lighting of a Leonardo da Vinci-inspired cauldron and performances featuring top designers and Mariah Carey, but it offered one element that some viewers had been waiting for: snow. Instead, snow’s “winter wonderland” effect landed elsewhere in the city, as Olympics organizers promoted a cultural program staged on the sidelines while the Games drew attention to Milan.
That production was a special edition of “Slava’s Snowshow,” created by clown and artist Slava Polunin. Polunin, whose stage work traces back to a production that has filled theaters with paper-snow storms in more than 60 countries since 1993, was presenting the show at Teatro Strehler, where performances continued until Feb. 22, the last day of the Olympics.
Polunin said snow carries emotional weight. In an email to The Associated Press, he described snow as “a very powerful image,” adding that it “can be immensely beautiful and incredibly dangerous.” He said the Olympics offered an opportunity to refresh the show for an audience whose attention was focused on the place where the performance was taking place, and he said the adaptation is “largely built on improvisation.”
Friday’s audience sat through a performance designed around that improvisational flexibility and a sense of play that blended the atmosphere of the Games with scenes drawn from Polunin’s clowning world. During one segment, Polunin briefly mimed a phone call, jokingly referencing the ongoing Olympics, and at another moment the “Chariots of Fire” theme song played as he and fellow clowns staged a playful bit.
Onstage, half a dozen clowns in bright green costumes shared the stage with Polunin, dressed in yellow. Actors climbed into the seats, swapped spectators’ belongings, and opened umbrellas, while lightly spraying water as the show built toward a sustained stretch of audience participation. For about an hour and a half, the theater filled with clapping and laughter, as spectators watched the stage remain blanketed in white until just before the final curtain, when giant, multi-colored globes bounced through the crowd.
Several attendees described returning for the family atmosphere and the show’s specific connection to Olympic timing. Paola Volpe said in the AP story that she and her family wanted to experience “Slava’s Snowshow” again with children, adding, “We were especially eager to return because we heard this was a special version linked to the Olympics.” Raquele Maggi said she has seen the show about six times with her daughters and described it as “a little like magic,” after saying that the production felt like a dream.
Behind the staging, Polunin’s own memories shaped the work. Born in Siberia, he told The Associated Press he remembered childhood joy in building white cities, roads, and snowmen, while also recalling fear during snowfalls and snowstorms when he worried about his parents leaving home. He said he tries “to look at things from different points of view, to see both the comic and the tragic side,” and that “for me, snow is full of beauty and anxiety,” themes that he said the performance conveys without spoken dialogue.
Polunin also said the show’s lack of language is part of its reach, telling The Associated Press: “Since our show is not tied to a language, it is understood by everyone.” In the Milan staging, viewers’ comments and the rhythm of the performance pointed to how the show’s paper-snow spectacle and improvisational interactions were drawing audiences to a winter image at a time when Milan’s Olympics spotlight was elsewhere—leaving the snow to arrive as a cultural sidebar rather than a centerpiece.