'Everyone Jumping, Everyone Happy': Rio Celebrates Carnival

Rio de Janeiro, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Feb, 2024) Glittering with sequins and sweat, thousands of performers shimmying to sultry samba beats danced their way down an avenue in Rio de Janeiro Sunday as the Brazilian beach city's famed carnival parades got under way.

With whimsical floats, thundering drum sections and legions of performers in fanciful, flesh-flaunting costumes, 12 samba schools are competing for the coveted title of carnival champions across two nights of epic booty-shaking.

Porto da Pedra, a school from the impoverished Sao Goncalo neighborhood, opened the festivities with a float topped by an enormous, roaring orange tiger that swatted out at the crowd with its claws, drawing shrieks of delight.

Entering the parade venue "gives me goosebumps every time," said Debora Moraes de Souza, a 53-year-old doctor who grew up in Sao Goncalo and has been parading with the school for a decade.

"You get to the end and you say, 'Oh, it's over already? I want more!' Everyone's jumping, everyone's happy.

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Rio has already been celebrating carnival for weeks with colorful, free-for-all street parties known as "blocos."

The parades are the climax: sumptuous festivals of color and sound that last all night and into the next day.

Flying the colors of their favorite schools, a capacity crowd of 70,000 spectators cheered from the packed stands of the Sambadrome stadium, the city's purpose-built parade venue, with millions more expected to watch live on tv.

But there is more to carnival than all-night partying.

The samba schools are rooted in Rio's impoverished favela neighborhoods, and each parade tells a story, often dealing with politics, social issues and history.

This year's parades include homages to little-known heroes of Afro-Brazilian history and a celebration of the Yanomami Indigenous people, who have been ravaged by a humanitarian crisis blamed on illegal gold mining in the Amazon rainforest.