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Carnival in Rio has been called the world's most famous party. A million tourists join millions of Rio de Janeiro citizens ("cariocas") in enthusiastic revelry spanning several days.
The Sambodromo parade is number one. Close runners-up are the street processions and masquerade balls.
The Sambodromo is a 700-meter (half-mile) long parade strip flanked by spectator stands and luxury boxes. On the last Sunday and Monday nights before Lent, the seats are filled with over 60,000 eager on-lookers. Tickets cost up to hundreds of dollars each and sell out quickly.
It's the sounds and sights of the parading samba schools that goes on from dusk to day break.
A samba school has nothing to do with education. It is typically a group from a poor neighborhood organized to produce a lavish Carnival of Rio procession - for the fun of it.
Only the best 14 samba schools parade through the big-time Sambodromo (the rest conduct street processions).
Every samba school strives to be judged the best overall.
It can take over an hour for a single samba school to pass a given point along the parade route.
Each samba school has showy floats, which are often adorned with sensuous females vibrating to the hypnotic music.
The floats are accompanied by marching samba bands numbering up to 300 musicians - their drummers ceaselessly pound the contagious samba beat. All are escorted by a sea of flamboyantly or scantily clad singer-dancers.
These diverse parade elements must work as a single unit, dramatizing the same theme, which the samba school changes annually for the Carnival in Rio.
A school can have up to 4,000 participants, so melding the ensemble into an organic whole is no easy task. The preparation requires nearly a year of sewing, building, composing, choreographing and rehearsing.
Samba school participants pay for their own costumes, which costs some of them a sizable slice of their income. They willingly do this because Carnival in Rio is a fantasy escape, which helps them forget their hardscrabble lives.
Some samba schools are not invited to partake in the Sambodromo parade. Many take to the streets. Some parade in their neighborhoods and downtown Rio. Their festivities are free public affairs - passers-by may join the fun by dancing behind (and sometimes with) the group's samba dancers and marching bands. Here you directly participate while in the Sambodromo seats you mainly observe.
These are celebrity-attended affairs. The merrymakers wear designer costumes and party from before midnight to the wee hours. It's an exciting and energetic experience (but admission costs up to $200 and the ballrooms tend to be jam-packed). The ball at the Copacabana Palace Hotel is the most famous.
Carnival in Rio takes place during the days preceding Ash Wednesday, the first of 40 meatless fasting days preceding Easter (Carnival derives from "carne vale" meaning "farewell to meat").
Although the official Carnival in Rio starting day is Saturday, the partying begins in earnest the night before and continues through Tuesday (Mardi Gras means "Fat Tuesday").
Here are the Carnival in Rio schedules for the next five years:
2010 Friday Feb 12
Tuesday Feb 16
2011 Friday Mar 4
Tuesday Mar 8
2012 Friday Feb 17
Tuesday Feb 21
2013 Friday Feb 8
Tuesday Feb 12
2014 Friday Feb 28
Tuesday Mar 4


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