Choreographer angry that NBC cut segment (Christian hymn was cut out)

The choreographer of a somber segment in the London Olympics opening ceremony said Saturday he's disappointed that NBC decided not to show it to an American audience.

Spectators were asked to display photos of loved ones who could not be there during the segment. The music, a hymn called "Abide With Me," was described in the ceremony's program as an "honest expression of the fear of approaching death."

NBC producers did not air it, instead showing American viewers Ryan Seacrest's interview with swimmer Michael Phelps.

"I am disappointed," said Londoner Akram Khan, who choreographed and danced in the segment. "I am really sad that I couldn't show the work in America, and that really upsets me, because I don't think it's any more or less than the other pieces. It brings to mind the question ... that maybe it's too truthful."

The ceremony's program describes the performance as dramatizing "the struggle between life and death using such powerful images of mortality as dust and the setting sun."

Some in the British press have interpreted the segment as being a tribute to victims of bomb attacks in July 2005 that killed 52 commuters and four suicide bombers on London's transit network

Here is a clearer recording of the Hymn, done by The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, with a bit of the history of the Hymn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmjuqZSH_aY&feature=related

Abide with Me

Henry F. Lyte, 1847

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see—
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour;
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s pow’r?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness;
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;
Heav’n’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

And another recording by Hayley Westenra

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg3gCw5mm7c&feature=related

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