Hi again everyone! Now I’ll tell you about our time at Carnival 2013. But first! Colin and I woke up early the morning of Feb 10th, as we were eager to catch some chanting by Gregorian monks! Colin had found out that the UNESCO heritage Mosteiro de São Bento nearby held morning mass complete with beautiful chanting in the ornate church. Once we got there, we found some explanations of the Benedictine Orders’ origins, which indicated they settled on their current hill in Central Rio at the end of the 16th century, building the church and monastery we were at in the early 1600’s, just 20 years after Rio was founded. The monastery is thus understandably one of the oldest in the Americas!
After the chanting, we headed to the Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil, where they were putting on an exhibit originally shown by the Barbican back in London! Entitled “Watch Me Move,” the exhibit gave us a lesson on the history of animation – really colorful and fun! It began not so colorful though, with old black and white animated cartoons playing for us, such as the Lumiere brothers’ “Dancing Skeleton.”
While the first rooms seemed to give us the start of animation, the next ones just became creepier! These videos included “Vincent” (1982) by Tim Burton and – this is a must see for its strangeness – “Rabbit” (2005) by Run Wrake, a London animator who was known for his out-of-the-box creations. The other animations traced through time and culture, with lots of descriptions and clips of how historical changes influenced and impacted what kind of animations were produced by a nation.
After the animations, Colin and I roamed around the rest of the Cultural Center, finding some old exhibits about money and the bank’s history, but not that much of interest. We tried to take a peak into the history museum but it was closed (due to Carnival?) so we headed home to rest up before the evening – we heard the celebrations would go until 5:00 am at the Sambadrome! Thus a nap was needed.
That evening we grabbed our passes and headed out for Carnival! Just a short walk away from our hotel in Centro, we followed the massive crowd and wormed our way into Sector 5 in the Sambadrome, grabbing some food and drinks before being packed into our seats along with what seemed like an oversold amount of seats for the section. We were immediately floored upon arriving – this place was huge and packed full of thousands of people (90,000 ticketed spectators to be exact), stretching in both directions in a long, wide theater.
Carnival is one of the biggest parties of the year, one which marks the beginning of Lent. During this period many Christians give up meat which actually gives rise to the term for the celebration: “…carnival,” is actually from carnelevare, meaning “to remove (literally, “raise”) meat. Different samba schools perform during the Carnival in the Sambadrome, competing with each other for judge and the public. We were ready to watch them and root for our favorites!
The samba schools that performed Sunday evening were Inocentes, Salgueiro, Unidos da Tijuca, União da Ilha, Mocidade, Portela. The first samba school to perform was Inocentes de B. Roxo, who came out with what appeared to be an Korean- themed parade. Giant ice-blue dragons, Buddhas, and plenty of blue-and-white decorations took their floats to the next level. The Rio Times writes that, “…the school investigates the seven unions of the river Han in South Korea. The performance will also focus on the goddess of wind, Yondung Halmoni, who is celebrated in shamanic rituals. This rather unique and adventurous topic was chosen to honor the Korean community in Brazil by incorporating their rich traditions in to the performance such as ritual dances and flowing colors to represent the movement of water.” (Hurrell, 2012)
The second samba school to perform was Salgueiro – a school with color of red and white, associating them jointly with Rio's patron saint, Saint Sebastian, and Xangô, an Afro-Brazilian orishá (or deity). Their theme is “fame,” throughout history, and according to The Rio Times, Salgueiro’s chosen theme “…tells of the quest for posterity and fame through history, mentioning from the pharaohs and great conquerors of the Antiquity to contemporary icons such as Che Guevara, the Beatles and top models.” (Hurrell, 2012) One of the first floats they put out was paparazzi-themed float complete with bodyguards and a huge, moving camera.
The third samba school was Unidos da Tijuca, which ended up being our favorite school of the evening, as most of their floats were interactive in some way. My favorite float of the night was one that had a giant waterslide that dancers got to jump on and slide down throughout the parade! Awesome. 
Next came the samba school União da Ilha, with a Rio Times reported theme of “Passion, Poetry and Carnival.” This theme, “…pays tribute to famous Brazilian poet, Vinícius de Moraes who… pen[ned] the classic international hit song ‘Garota de Ipanema’ (Girl from Ipanema) which has been replicated by a number of prominent artists today.” (Hurrell, 2012)
Although another group, Portela, performed later with a parade tribute to their own hometown, but by then we had been partying in the hot Sambadrome for 8 hours straight. The party was supposed to go on until after 5 am and we knew the next day was filled with more hours of floats so we decided to head back to the hotel.
The next day we relaxed the entire day, pretty exhausted from having spent the previous night out in the heat at the parade until 3am, not returning to the hotel until after 4am to crash into bed. By the time we finally got around to moving, ordering food and getting showered, it was time for the next evening’s festivities!
Monday night was similar to Sunday, Sector 5 seats again, but this time we made the mistake of choosing spots next to the stairs in the general seating. This meant we were really packed in, as the seating is concrete benches with no assigned space. Everyone kept trying to crowd from the stairs next to us into our area since they couldn’t find anywhere else to go! We have to say, after that experience, that we recommend anyone with the means to really consider shelling-out for seats in a private box, even if it means only going one night. From our view of them, it looked like there was way more space, easy access to food and drinks, and great views, plus no risk of a stampede! Also, if you do go one night, try and get tickets for the Champion’s Parade – this is the evening when all the best parades perform together, so you don’t miss seeing any of the big winners!
Anyways, back to the samba schools! Monday night we saw another collection of schools, which though incredible, didn’t seem as impressive as Sunday evening. Monday evening gave us the samba schools São Clemente (with a Brazilian TV theme), Mangueira (with a hometown Cuiaba/World-Cup theme), Beija-flor (with a horse theme), Grande Rio (with a political theme arguing against oil royalties being sent to other Brazilian states outside of Rio), Imperatriz (with an Amazon theme), and Vila Isabel (with a daily Brazilian life theme.) Beija-flor turned out being our favorite, and we wondered if the best schools angled to get the third position in the line-up routinely. We also enjoyed watching the Grande Rio parade, which was quite fascinating despite its seemingly dull theme of petroleum.
We decided to leave after seeing 4 of the schools, as the seating situation was even more uncomfortable than the night before. Because we ended up leaving during the change-over from one parade to the next, everything was quite chaotic. On our way out, we decided to try and see if we could see the final floats while they lined up for the parade. Somehow in all this mess, we ended up insisting we knew where we were going as we managed to worm our way backstage, having told the guard we only speak English and didn’t understand his insistence to see passes.
Once we made it backstage, no one seemed to care or notice we were there, as all the attention was on getting the costumed women onto the giant floats. We realized from watching backstage that they did this with big cranes, lifting the women onto the floats into position, and attaching them there with wires. It also seemed that everything was scrambling to be put together at the last minute. Interestingly, the dancers who perform into between the floats enter the Sambadrome at a different point than the floats, as the floats were huge and needed their own space to be readied.
Glad for our detour backstage, we walked back to our hotel past all the floats being prepared for the next couple of schools’ shows, and basically got to see what all the floats were going to be – and up close! Really beats sweating it out in those general crowded stadium seats. We found out the following week that the winner of the overall Carnival 2013 was Vila Isobel with a score of 299.7 points out of a possible 300. Beija Flor won second place by just 0.3 of a point, and Unidos da Tijuca was third, Imperatriz ranked fourth, and Salgueiro was 5th. Since our favorites were Beija Flor and Unidos da Tijuca, we were pretty happy for them!
We got back to the hotel again at around 3am-4am on the 12th, and rested up the following day. I’ll begin again with Feb 13th, the day we went to see more of Rio, including Christ the Redeemer!
Talk to you soon,
Francesca
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