Fat Tuesday

Tuesday, Feb 5 – Day 50

The committee announced this morning that perennial favorite Beja Flor is the Carnaval winner. Beja Flor has won something like 7 of the last 10 Carnavals. They were the very last parade of the night, so I wasn’t around to watch. They show the entire set of parades on TV the following day, so I watched that, but I would have given my vote to Imperatriz, another crowd favorite. Beja Flor had 4,200 dancers, and spent R$4.0 million on their parade.

There was a little controversy this year as one of the dancers for samba school Sao Clemente was completely nude, which is a serious violation. It seems that her “costume”, which consisted of a single 3.5 mm piece of glitter, apparently fell off. As a penalty for this offense, the team was dropped to last place, which means they get relegated down to second division next year, and will not be able to compete as a special school in the Sambodromo.

There are more blocos this afternoon, but I stayed home and rested up for The Scala Ball. In addition to the blocos, there are a small number of “bailes” or semi-private balls that you have to either be invited to or buy a ticket for. The most formal is the Baile do Copa, a black-tie and lavishly costumed affair at the Copacabana Palace that brings in all of Rio’s high society.

The Scala Ball is the most infamous of the bailes. It’s billed as a mostly gay event, but I had a date and was with a group, so I’m not bothered by that. But yikes, this was one weird crowd! Live cameras and TV hosts vie for positions along a red carpet entry to interview the drag-queens with the most outrageous costumes. I’m sure that we’re on TV as we entered the room behind a 6’6”, 300 lb guy wearing a lavish dress and feathers in his hair that made him 8’ tall. And he turned out to be one of the more conservatively dressed people in the place. Other costumes, of both men and women, were just insane. It was interesting for a while, and there is nothing better than watching some really attractive Brazilian girls samba, but as it got later, it began to feel like the dark underside of Carnaval so we left about midnight and found a more traditional dance club.