Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Brazil's carnival ends with gay ball, street samba parties
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Revelers wrapped up Brazil's wild carnival bash with the popular Gala Gay ball Tuesday night on Rio de Janeiro's streets, littered with feathers and sequins after five days of partying.
Thousands of onlookers gawked as men in glittering miniskirts, evening dresses, bead-studded lingerie and feathered headdresses shimmied down a wide avenue to the sounds of ABBA's "Dancing Queen," for a party that would last until dawn Wednesday.
After a week that saw everything from a scandal over a planned Holocaust-themed float -- later nixed by a judge -- to a samba queen's quest to set a world record for the most plastic surgeries, revelers spent Carnival's last hours dancing the samba behind street bands.
"It is just impossible to describe it," 30-year-old Dutch bank worker Alexander Milikan said as he took a break from the festivities on Ipanema beach. "There's street parties everywhere, everyone's dancing, it's amazing."
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent and pre-Easter praying and fasting for the world's largest Roman Catholic country. But most Brazilians will be glued to their televisions in the afternoon to learn the winner of the centerpiece of Rio's Carnival: the fiercely competitive Samba parade.
Early favorites included the samba "schools" Unidos de Tijuca, Grande Rio and Beija Flor, which has won four of the past five years but had its reputation marred by accusations that directors conspired to steal last year's championship by intimidating judges. An investigation yielded an inconclusive report.
"They tried to disqualify our parade in 2007, but we have shown that we have won in the most dignified manner possible," Beija Flor's director, who uses the single name Laila, told a booing crowd before the group's parade got started early Tuesday.
Jeers gave way to applause, however, as the group paraded opulent floats, ornate costumes and a topless beauty queen. Its dancers were encrusted in gold and wore masks and wings, in an allusion to ancient legends of the Amazon rain forest.
Actresses Lucy Liu and Monica Bellucci were among the international celebrities attending this year's Rio parade, and supermodel Naomi Campbell showed up for Carnival in the coastal city of Salvador.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
