Second day in Rio, part 4–Carnaval
Once we had gotten over the shock of the peacock, we were able to settle in and really look at the stuff coming next. But first, you need a primer on Rio Carnaval.
This is the Carnaval that you’ve seen on TV with the near-naked, feather clad women dancing in impossibly high boots. It’s also so much more. There are 12 Samba Schools. Their sole existence relies on their performance at Carnaval every year. Samba Carnaval in Rio, unlike the other side parties, citywide blocos and parades, etc., takes place over two days, with an extra “parade of champions” day featuring the finalists. The first six schools parade the first day, and the other six the next day.
Each school has a music director, a costume director, and everything else to put on an eye-popping show. They are all housed in what Marcelo told us were the “shacks,” big old buildings downtown that have been repurposed for fun. Every year, the schools have a theme for the parade, in addition to theme music written especially for the performance, I think. The theme song is sung by the whole school, peppered with live percussion, and repeated for the entire time the school is on the street. There is an MC who also serves as main vocalist, driving the whole song to a fever pitch for almost an hour. All the MCs I saw were gigantic, lusty black Brazilian baritones who would put Luther Vandross to a serious test.
There are various levels of participation. You can go to your samba school all year long to perfect intricate choreography, you can take a lighter schedule and do some basic moves, you can pay for your costume, know the samba step, and promise to be in the “best-of” performance should your school get there, or you can be a hot Brazilian star. If you’re there strictly to samba without any preparation, you buy your costume at one of several outlets representing the schools, show up at the Sambódromo when you’re supposed to, and hit the street alongside several thousand other rabid folks with the same theme song stuck in their heads. And please don’t forget the 300+ costumed percussionists that are interspersed throughout each performance for maximum force of samba beat.
I don’t know how much of your costume you actually get to keep, but I suspect it’s only the headgear, as evidenced by the two feather-clad guys in the last section. Or maybe the school takes them up for cleaning and safekeeping should they make it to the finals.
Meanwhile, Tijuca was bringin’ it on, with an instantly memorable theme song, and the subject of “things collected.” Here is a cool penguin float followed by a closeup of some of the major players in Tijuca’s show.
Notice the people hanging out of the camarotes. They’re the private boxes that you can buy a regular old ticket for, or come to party with one of the several companies, etc. that rent them for the event. Also notice the furry blue bears and the closeup that follows: cutout belly and vents galore.
Next came the most fascinating, yet creepiest thing in Tijuca’s arsenal: a dollhouse with myriad rooms, populated by real live dolls and real dead dolls of both sexes. Two towers of this palace were womaned by a couple of über hot Brazilian genies, and a bride wearing white (who was certainly no virgin!) did the old siren gag off the balcony for the judges. The dormer windows featured dolls in blackface that would put on and remove their masks not only in time to the music, but in a mechanical fashion that scared me. These were obviously the year-rounders, because they performed their choreography seamlessly without being able to see each other.
The dolls were ultra-creepy, like dolls tend to be.
But then they’d throw in this dash of Rowrrrrr with the genie girls, and it would balance out into some kind of Twin Peaks fantasy.
The way these parades worked is, they would intersperse the basic elements: floats, highly trained participants, lightly trained participants, percussion sections, samba steppers only, movie and TV stars in duos as flag couples, and movie and TV stars solo and in tiny costumes like they should be. There is a rule against any genital nudity, and a g-string is required for all hotties. The stars would have their own performing areas, and were like little dabs of rich chocolate on a dessert. The choreographers spaced everything perfectly. The blue bears you saw above were one-time samba steppers. The guy in the big hoop skirt was probably a part-timer, and the dolls doing the big gig in the dollhouse were surely full-timers. But what do I know, really?
Here’s one of the stars of Brazilian TV for your inspection.
