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Rio Carnaval 2008
| Special Rio de Janeiro Carnaval 2010 Report |
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Carnaval Sunday, February 15, 2010 Start of parades: 9:00 p.m. School
Carnaval
Monday, February 16
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the elite
in the special league
as neither its innovative introduction of Segway scooters for
its front line commission nor the standout performances
which garnered more highly coveted Gold Standard
Awards than any others samba school was enough to finish
higher than 12th and thus
Imperio Serrano
is demoted to the "A" Access league from whence
it came the prior year.
There is an intense focus within Rio de Janeiro political community to cement its place as the first City of South America by successfully hosting the 2014 World Cup followed by the 3026 Olympic games. Only two weeks after the city was awarded the Olympics, beating off the challenge of Madrid, Chicago and Tokyo a spectacular piece of violence took place when a police helicopter was shot down killing 2 officers and 10 suspected gang members were killed as well. "We never hid our problems during the bid process. We always told people -- and we are still facing problems," Paes told the Global Sports Industry Summit in London. "Firstly I would like to say that we never hid our problems throughout the bidding process," said Paes, in a presentation to the Global Sports Industry Congress in London. "And we remain confident that the policies we are introducing to Rio will make the situation much better and we are working towards developing a safe Games. We staged the Pan-American Games [in 2007] and it was safe, we have the Carnival and every New Year's Eve we have two million people on Copacabana Beach and that is safe. It is the challenge for us but we believe the city will be much more secure for all of our citizens. We know there is work to do but the Olympic Games and the [2014] World Cup is a great opportunity for us to bring the changes we want to. "We look at Barcelona as an example. Before the 1992 Olympics there was one Barcelona and after that there was another and we want Rio to do the same." While the city's homicide rate dropped to 33 per 100,000 people last year from 39 per 100,000 the year before - the lowest for 17 years - it was still considerably higher than the rates of their competitors for the 2016 Olympics, with Chicago (18) being the closest.
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Help Disco had become world renowned as a safe place to meet free-lance women ready for sex for a price. A last delaying tactic to keep its doors open at least till Carnaval, in mid February didn't work as Rio's Governor Sergio Cabral gave an ultimatum determining that the place should be emptied by the weekend or else. The location will be used to build the new Museum of Image and Sound (MIS). Demolition to make way for a facility expected to open well before the 2014 World Cup began almost immediately after the January 8th 2010 closure. Governor Cabral, is behind a $35 million dollar plan to demolish club and replace it with a music-themed museum designed by the same architecture firm that designed New York’s Lincoln Centre. US based Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Till the last day, the main attractions of the club were there as if nothing was happening: on one side the foreign tourists looking for sex, on the other, prostitutes looking for money. Help had grown to symbolize all that was decadent about Rio de Janeiro and there was a strong feeling that Help Discoteca's reputation would compete with the attention that is expected in the coming years as the state invests heavily in the infrastructure to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. While operating brothels is outlawed in Brazil, getting paid or indeed paying for sex is entirely legal. Promotion of sex tourism is also illegal in Brazil although the lines and attitudes are gray. As Rio feels the heat of the brighter global media spotlight, this is clearly not the image the leadership wishes to project as it seeks to maximize the positive benefits of hosting the Olympics. Many are not happy about the change including the thousands of working girls who frequented the club. “We only use the club to meet clients. This is not a crime. All we do here is dance and have fun,” Patricia Alcantara, 30, told the Rio newspaper O Dia. “With the closure of Club Help we will have to go on to the streets.”
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Help,
the notorious night club prominently located on Avenida
Atlantica in Copacabana was not allowed to stay open for the
2010 February Carnaval season despite a concerted campaign for
just one more month. No final reprieve for Carnaval was
forthcoming as the campaign to help the Help workers ended with
a quick auction and quicker demolition of the famous facility.
The closure is considered a major step in the effort to
change Rio's image as a center for sex tourism. 
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 There have been hundreds of blocos
(local street parades) in Rio carnival in recent years.
Nobody really knew how many. For Carnaval 2010, the prefetura -
Rio's local government - is trying to impose some order
on the chaos by insisting that all the blocos register
officially. The idea is to try to rationalize the
schedule to minimize traffic congestion, and to predict
where and when facilities like mobile toilets might be
necessary.
As a result of the new law, 461 blocos have been given permission to parade in Rio carnaval 2010. The City subsidizes 120 of them. The decision to force the blocos to register officially has been controversial - there have been demonstrations in protest. Registration takes away some of the anarchic chaos that is the point of carnival. Some blocos (for example, the one that incorporates a ferry ride from Rio to Niteroi as part of their route) felt that they would never get their routes approved. Last year 269 blocos registered officially. This year there are 499 official parades - some blocos parade more than once. There's 39 in Zona Oeste (16 last year), 54 in Barra, 55 in Tijuca (21 last year), 83 in Zona Norte (from 18 last year), 96 in Centro and 172 in Zona Sul. "The challenge is to organize the party without letting it lose the spontaneity. The block has to jump in wherever you want, the way he sees fit" - advocates Cláudio Pinheiro, founder of Banda de Ipanema. President of the Association of Residents of Ipanema, Maria Amélia Loureiro disagrees. She even likes to see the band go away from the coast. "This year was a horror. My suggestion is to take the blocks to the center of Rio, which is not residential and has wider streets. There, they can make noise away from homes 24 hours a day. It would also facilitate the police, who could keep its men to one place." she told a globo report Riotur, the Rio state tourist board, has been able to make alterations to the dates and routes of some of the blocos to minimize disruption to traffic.
Giselle of TD Sounds did a partial schedule of some of
the best known blocos, with dates, times and locations -
you can access this
here .
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| Pink miniskirted Geisy returns for Carnaval |
Geisy Arruda,
who became an instant celebrity in 2009 after being
heckled by hundreds of fellow students because of her
short pink dress, has accepted invitations to
participate with samba groups in Rio de Janeiro and Sao
Paulo. "It will be a dream come true for me," Arruda
said. Arruda made her comments just before giving
a deposition to police who are investigating whether
crimes were committed when a crowd of students harassed
her on Oct. 22 at the University Bandeirante in
Sao Bernardo do Campo,
just outside Sao Paulo. The publicity was amplified by
youtube video. The private university expelled Arruda,
alleging her provocative attitude, not her dress, caused
the near riot. After a national uproar, the university
reinstated her.
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| 2009 Rio de Janeiro Samba School Awards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Samba school
Salgueiro edged last year’s champion, Beija-Flor, to win
the Carnival parades championship. Salgueiro’s parade
theme this year focused on the history of the drum
dating back almost to the dawn of man. Some floats, for
example, depicted cavemen atop prehistoric animals. It
was the ninth time Salgueiro claimed the crown, but its
first win since 1993. Beija-Flor had won five of the
previous six competitions.
Salgueiro's parade was simply entitled Drum!, and told
The top six finishing samba schools of Rio's fiercely competitive Carnival parades marched the Parade of champions on the Carnaval after Saturday: Mangueira, Grande Rio, Vila Isabel, Portela, Beija-Flor and Salgueiro, Salgueiro's parade theme centered on the history of the drum and its importance to music in various cultures. An army of 4,100 marched alongside ornate floats featuring prehistoric beasts ridden by cavemen. The school scored 399 points out of a possible 400 to win its ninth title and first since 1993. In second place with 398 points was Beija-Flor, which had won five of the previous six years and edged out Salgueiro in 2008. Salgueiro performed its interpretation of the history of the drum using eight huge and beautifully designed floats and 4,200 dancers dressed in imaginative costumes and divided into 36 groups.
Despite the fact that at the beginning
of its parade, Salgueiro had mechanical problems with
some of its floats, the members of the samba school
managed to resolve them in time and make a clean
presentation for the judging panel and the more than
70,000 people crammed into the Sambadrome Monday night. "It's a huge win. Salgueiro really needed this victory," said a crying school president Regina Celia Duran. "Salgueiro is a family, and we are now all very happy." In an attempt at a record for the smallest scrap of clothing ever in a Carnival parade, model Dani Sperle sported a sparkly silver headdress, a necklace, matching arm bands, and nothing else but a 3cm long patch of cloth. Stars like Brazilian top model Gisele Bundchen and Hollywood actors Kevin Spacey and Matthew McConaughey were spotted over two days of the parades. Officials reported nearly 720,000 tourists to flock to the city's Carnival and pump $521 million into the local economy.
On Carnaval Saturday, the Access league parades in the Sambadromo with the winner becoming one of the 12 greatest parading samba schools in the world the following year. With the theme: "What is travel - Travel through the extraordinary worlds known and unknown" the school took the crown and will return to the Special League for the first time since 2001.
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the history of the instrument which all cultures share
and is likely humanity's first instrument first played
in Africa.| Going Global: | ||||||||||||
| As the moon waxes so does the date for Carnaval | ||||||||||||
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20109Queens or Rainhas da
bateria
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| Bottomless Ban | ||||||||||||
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| Viviane Castro
paraded nearly nude in the 2009 Carnaval Saturday parade in Sao
Paulo with the U.S. leader's visage on her left thigh. Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's face was on her opposite
thigh. Castro's stomach read "for sale" _ a message she said represented the sale of Brazil's Amazon to the U.S. Many here fear the U.S. wants to control the resource-rich region. She wore the same patch in 2008 when she had an infamous wardrobe malfunction. While most of the top 6 groups appearing in the Parade of Champions had topless dancers, the judges drew the line at going bottomless, apparently penalizing perennial special group contender Sao Clemente for breaking a rule against display of genitalia during its 80-minute parade. Viviane Castro, a model and dancer, had lost her original "tapasexo" -- a small triangle 1.6-inch patch,of glitter used to cover the most intimate parts of her body. An improvised substitute glued between her legs right before the show also fell off on the parade strip. [MORE] |
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| Sex, Drugs & Samba | ||||||||||||
| Officially Brazil's drinking laws only allow those over 18 years to drink, but this is rarely enforced. Beer, wine, and liquor can be bought any day of the week from grocery stores and delis. Beer is widely sold through street vendors, bakeries, and refreshment stands. | ||||||||||||
| Condoms endorsed by | ||||||||||||
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President Lula |
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| In the past, when the Roman Catholic
Church complains - as it traditionally does - about the free
handout of millions condoms over Carnaval, you can expect the Minister Gomes
Temporao to respond by stressing that the prevention of
sexually-transmitted diseases “is a public health problem, not a
religious problem”. Lula demonstrated his certainty of his government's position on this issue when he tossed out condoms to Carnival
revelers early Monday during Rio's samba
parades. A presidential spokesman says Silva wanted to show
the importance of Brazil's campaign to prevent the spread of
AIDS.
Brazil is handing out 65 million free condoms this month; that's up from the usual 45 million. Brazil is buying 1.2 billion condoms in 2010 for its program, making it the world's biggest government buyer of prophylactics. [More about the Church & Carnaval in Brazil on our News Page] |
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| Rio Carnaval Dates | ||||||||||||
| 2010 - February 13-16 2011 - March 5-8 2012 - February 18-21 2013 - February 9-12 2014 - March 1-4 2015 - February 14-17 2016 - February 6-9 2017 - February 25-28 2018 - February 10-13 2019 - March 2-5 2020 - February 22-25 2021 - February 13-16 2022 - February 26 - March 1 2023 - February 18-21 2024 - February 10-13 2025 - March 1-4 2026 - February 14-17 2027 - February 6-9 2028 - February 26-29 2029 - February 10-13 2030 - March 2-5 2031 - February 22-25 2032 - February 7-10 2033 - February 26 - March 1 2034 - February 18-21 2035 - February 3-6 2036 - February 23-26 2037 - February 14-17 2038 - March 6-9 2039 - February 19-22 2040 - February 11-14 |
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Vila Isabel -
