CARNIVAL IN RIO

CARNIVAL IN RIO :

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).It can take over an hour for a single samba school to pass a given point along the parade route. 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.

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.

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 official Carnival in Rio schedules for the next two years:
2009 Feb 21 to 24
2010 Feb 13 to 16