Published on : Tuesday, March 5, 2019
More than 70,000 people were getting ready to sing at the top of their voices as the seven final samba schools paraded through the city’s Sambadrome, the huge concrete arena built by legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemayer.
The judges are to announce the winner of the samba contest on Wednesday, their decision based on three criteria: the inventiveness of the carnival floats, the theme of parade, and the quality of the dancing in the sambadrome.
The night before, another seven of the city’s competing samba schools – a mixture of trained dancers and enthusiastic neighborhood locals – had staged their own colorful parade, in costumes and with giant decorated floats.
The first school of 2,500 dancers and musicians were due to samba their way past the crowds and the judges at 9.15pm (0015 Tuesday), with the last school strutting their stuff down the 700-metre strip close to dawn.
The city had been battered by torrential summer rains in the hours leading up to the start of the parade on Sunday, but the skies cleared, as if by magic, just as the first samba school sashayed into the spotlight.
Sunday saw a display of spectacular floats featuring giant flamboyant birds, slave ships, the Roman colosseum and of course scantily clad dancers in exotic headdresses throbbing to the deafening beat of drum bands.