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Lady Gaga’s dazzling performance of Zizi Jeanmaire’s “Mon Truc en Plumes” (“My Thing With Feathers”) set the irreverent tone of the Olympics’ opening ceremony on Friday night. But it nearly got called off due to the rain, says Maud le Pladec, the choreographer and head of dance for the Olympics and Paralympics who worked with Gaga for many months.

Le Pladec, who worked closely with the Olympics’ ceremonies artistic director Thomas Jolly to orchestrate the four-hour showcase and create the choreography, revealed that Gaga’s performance had to be filmed hours before festivities started for safety reasons; nevertheless, she still sang live.

For the first time in modern history, the ceremony took place outside a stadium. It unfolded along the Seine River, which runs through the city, highlighting Paris’ iconic landmarks. Gaga’s performance was one of 12 created for the occasion, and while it ran “only four minutes,...

"I am strong because I have no choice . . . But I am fragile. I am fragile too."

Every year, June brings a sense of freedom. We're literally free from layers of cold-weather clothes, but we're also free to express our sexuality in whatever way we feel possible. This is (at least a piece of) what Pride Month is about. It's easy nowadays to forget that Pride stems back to a riot. Yes, a riot of bricks and broken glass and beaten bodies - a majority of those bodies being Black and brown.

Tajabone is just one part of Nowness's "Just Dance" series, "genre-busting" videos that seek to transform what dance can accomplish. Running three and a half minutes, the film, directed by Raphael Chatelaine and Nicolas Huchard, reminds us how both fragile and powerful the queer community of color is. Huchard, a young Black choreographer and performer from Paris, reached out to Chatelaine,...