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Why Carnival
in Rio is special
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.
Carnival happenings
 The highlight is the Sambodromo parade. Close runners-up are the street processions and masquerade balls.
Sambodromo parade
 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.
The attraction is 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 procession - for the fun of it.
Only the best 14 samba schools parade through the big-time
Sambodromo (the rest conduct street processions). The competition to be judged the best overall samba school
is keen - and everyone wants to win.
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 garnished 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 is surrounded 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.
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 is a fantasy
escape, which helps them forget their hardscrabble lives.
Carnival
street processions
Some samba schools that 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.
Masquerade balls
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 calendar
Carnival 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 starting day is Saturday, the
partying begins in earnest the night before and continues through Tuesday (Mardi Gras means "Fat
Tuesday").
Here are the
official schedules
for the next several years:
 2008
Feb 02 to 05
2009
Feb 21 to 24
2010
Feb 13 to 16
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Wonders of the World
 
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