Carneval 2010 in Rio de Janeiro
Parade
The famous carnival parade has
been going on since the 1930s. The parade starts Sunday
evening and continues into early morning Monday of the
celebration. Until 1984, when it was moved to Av. Presidente
Vargas, the parade took place at Praca Onze. In 1984 the
parade finally found its permanent home, the Sambadrome
["sambódromo" in Portuguese]. The Sambadrome
is a large structure that was built in the downtown area,
which includes several buildings that make a circular open
area in the middle. In the off season, the buildings of the
Sambadrome are used as classrooms for the local public schools.
Samba Schools
The carnival parade is filled with people and floats from
various samba schools. A samba school can either be an
actual school or just a collaboration of local neighbors
that want to attend carnival. Samba schools include:
Mocidade Independente, Imperio Serrano, Academicos do
Salgueiro, Unidos da Tijuca, and Beija-Flor de Nilopolis.
The purpose of carnival is for samba schools to compete
with fellow rival schools; this competition is the climax of
the whole carnival festival. Each school chooses a theme to
try and portray in their entry. The samba schools work to
build the best floats and costumes to represent their
themes, and to include the best music they can from their
band called the bateria. There are many parts to each
school's entry including the six to eight floats and
thousands of participants.
There is a special order that every school has to follow
with their parade entries. Each school begins with the
"comissão de frente", which is the first
wing. The "comissão de frente" is made up
of ten to fifteen people only, and they are the ones who
introduce the school and set the mood. These people have
choreographic dances in fancy costumes that usually tell a
short story. Following the "comissão de
frente" is the first float of the samba school, called "abre-alas".
Some of the important roles include the
porta-bandeira and mestre-sala. The
porta-bandeira is a very important lady who is in
charge of the samba school flag, including making sure to
not allow the flag to roll. She is accompanied by the
mestre-sala, who is supposed to draw
everyone’s attention to "his queen", the
porta-bandeira. Floatees, who are also important,
are the people who populate the floats, also known as
destaques. The floatees have the most luxurious and
expensive costumes that can be extremely heavy. Along with
all the floatees is one main floatee that is located at the
top of each float. The main destaque dances and sings for
the entire time that the float is on the runway.
One other aspect that is mandatory is the presence of the
ala das baianas. This is a wing of the samba school entry
that includes at least 100 females only. These women along
with many other people do not ride on the floats as many
others do, instead they are passistas, the people who belong
to the samba school that do the marching alongside and
between the floats.
[
The Event price includes:
- 4 overnights
in Pestana Rio Atlantica
- 5 days service of the organizers
not included:
- International flights
- Internal flight of Brazil
- Rates of international departure
- Drinks and personal expenses
- entrance to Sambodromo
(please send us a message in which category you want to sit !)