Gather25 set out to do something almost nobody had tried. One continuous broadcast, 25 hours long, handed from continent to continent. Seven sessions, each hosted in a different country: the United States, New Zealand, Malaysia, Romania, Rwanda, the United Kingdom, and Peru, all translated live into 87 languages. Every session needed an opener. The first one had to start the whole thing for an audience that didn't share a language, a time zone, or a culture.
When you can't count on words, you tell the story with bodies. One small person alone in the dark. Then another. Then a hundred. The whole day was about people all over the world finding out they weren't alone. So the opener needed to tell that tale, from one spark to a fire.
It opens on a single child dancer in the dark. Just a kid, moving alone. Then others begin to join, and the choreography grows more complicated and more unified at the same time, until the patterns on stage start to look like people from everywhere finding each other.
Then it catches.
Fire and sparks spread across the stage and up into the LED walls. A rhythmic voice-over drives it forward, building until the whole thing is burning. Five minutes, from one kid by herself to a stage full of light.
We had four days of rehearsal to get there.
An estimated seven million people joined over those 25 hours, online, across seven live locations, and in more than 21,000 group gatherings in homes and arenas. Some even checked in from the research stations in Antarctica. And it started with one kid in the dark.