Sambadrome Competition
On Sunday headed to the beach for the day and then got ready for Sambadrome.
This event is what the Carnaval is all about, so just imagine how crazy this city gets after planning for a full year!
Each year before Carnival, the Samba schools compete for a place to perform at the Sambadrome during Carnival. The top 14 schools are selected and 7 perform each night over the two nights of the competition. On entering the kilometre long steet each school has an hour to perform their hearts out to impress the judges.
Each school can have up to 3,000 members and the school is judged on the song, costumes, choreography etc., Once the school has finished the cleaners come in to do a quick clean up then the next school starts.
The colors and atmosphere in the Sambadrome were unreal!! Each school had over 10 floats each....usually one float and then about 300 dancers....broken up in 3 different groups of costumes...then another float another 300 dancers etc., What we could not believe was that most of them throw away their costumes after the parade! Every year is a new theme/costume. This is very serious business for them.
We left our hotel around 6:30 pm to get there via metro. We had a group leader and the groups were up to 15 people each. There are so many people on the street and the metro, that pick pockets are everywhere...so we had to be very careful.
The actual competition starts at 9 pm. We lasted until 5 am after the 6th school went by. ... the metro would be even more crazy after the last school entry so better head back.
Our group drank, danced and acted silly with our costumes or ones that someone would find along the stands to wear. I'm hoping my pictures will be a great memory of this awesome event.
This is why I woke up at noon today and am still a bit sleepy...but thought I should catch up my blog as there are too many things happening to remember them all!
It's CARNAVAL!
This event is what the Carnaval is all about, so just imagine how crazy this city gets after planning for a full year!
Each year before Carnival, the Samba schools compete for a place to perform at the Sambadrome during Carnival. The top 14 schools are selected and 7 perform each night over the two nights of the competition. On entering the kilometre long steet each school has an hour to perform their hearts out to impress the judges.
Each school can have up to 3,000 members and the school is judged on the song, costumes, choreography etc., Once the school has finished the cleaners come in to do a quick clean up then the next school starts.
The colors and atmosphere in the Sambadrome were unreal!! Each school had over 10 floats each....usually one float and then about 300 dancers....broken up in 3 different groups of costumes...then another float another 300 dancers etc., What we could not believe was that most of them throw away their costumes after the parade! Every year is a new theme/costume. This is very serious business for them.
We left our hotel around 6:30 pm to get there via metro. We had a group leader and the groups were up to 15 people each. There are so many people on the street and the metro, that pick pockets are everywhere...so we had to be very careful.
The actual competition starts at 9 pm. We lasted until 5 am after the 6th school went by. ... the metro would be even more crazy after the last school entry so better head back.
Our group drank, danced and acted silly with our costumes or ones that someone would find along the stands to wear. I'm hoping my pictures will be a great memory of this awesome event.
This is why I woke up at noon today and am still a bit sleepy...but thought I should catch up my blog as there are too many things happening to remember them all!
It's CARNAVAL!
posted by Isabella @ 7:36 AM
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