By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
RIO DE JANEIRO,
Brazil -- Financial centers may be worrying that Brazil's economy could
be
going down the
tubes and taking the rest of Latin America with it. But in Rio, that's
no reason
not to dance.
Brazilians are
engaged in the last Carnival of the millennium, undeterred so far by driving
rain and
floods over
the last few weeks, the arrest of the man in charge of the main Carnival
parade on
charges of money
laundering and an economic scene that already bears perhaps a bit too much
resemblance
to the Big Top.
"The Carnival
of the crisis is here," Eduardo Giannetti, a columnist at the Folha de
Sao Paulo, wrote.
"Half of me
will grow delirious, the other half will ponder."
For four days,
beginning Sunday and ending on Ash Wednesday, official Brazil rolls down
its
shutters. President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso went off to his vacation home after promising
not to
spoil the fun
by announcing any new policies.
A team from the
International Monetary Fund made sure to finish combing through Brazil's
finances
and reworking
terms for its standby loan before Carnival began.
And when buttoned-down
Brazil pulls back, party Brazil takes over. The streets fill up with dance
bands and costumes,
known in Portuguese as "fantasias," in which the boundaries of convention
vanish. In the
seaside neighborhood of Ipanema, where an out-of-reach 14-year-old once
inspired
the song that
is the bossa nova's anthem, the surest way to tell the men from the women
is by the
feet: The women
wear flats.
"Everybody lets
go, without judging anybody else," said Ilson Pinheiro, 39, who was selling
beer at a
free seaside
concert. Every few steps, the peddler dropped his cooler and broke out
dancing with
whoever was
near, from a toddler to an older woman whose husband looked on, amused.
"This is
marvelous --
I wish it were like this all year," Pinheiro said.
Sunday and Monday
nights, fourteen of Rio's first-ranked samba schools bring in the dawn
with
parades highlighting
places like Natal in northeastern Brazil, musicians like Heitor Villa Lobos,
artists
and political
and historical figures. Here in Rio, the festival also features a growing
number of
informal street
parades staged by neighborhood bands and private celebrations around the
city.
On the street
where Rio's top samba schools use warehouses to build the scores of "carros
alegoricos,"
as the mobile, multi-level stages that are used to present their performances
are called, it
is easy enough
to see why Carnival endures. A walk through a vestibule into one of the
buildings,
heavily guarded
to prevent spying by the competition, opens a world of four-story fantasies
in
styrofoam and
full color.
"Crises come
and go," said Joaosinho Trinta, the creative director, of the Viradouro
samba school,
"but Carnival
stays, because it's our soul."
Trinta, who is
65, likens the samba school's parade to a street opera. The samba schools'
stories are
told in highly
stylized music, dance and more than a half-dozen mobile tableaux, usually
accompanied
by 3,000 or
more costumed revelers. The crowds react by singing the schools' lyrics,
which radio
stations have
been playing since New Year.
Trinta's show
this year focuses on Anita Garibaldi, a Brazilian who was the wife of Giuseppe
Garibaldi, the
hero of Italian unification. Trinta used a reference to Anita Garibaldi's
rumored
involvement
with sorcery as a springboard to illustrate different kinds of magic he
associates with
Brazil. In his
first float, witches turn into butterflies, while elements of another float
illustrate the magic
of its African
culture, and yet another, its indigenous tribes.
Down the street,
Rosa Magalhaes the only woman who is director of a major samba school's
production,
created visions of giant tigers jumping out of a library to illustrate
the life of the
17th-century
Dutch naturalist Albert Eckout.
In one room late
last week, scores of women ran seams and fixed trimmings on the last of
the
costumes, while
in another part of the warehouse youngsters pasted red and black feathers
on giant
birds. "Fun?"
she asked. "Carnival is exhausting."
Another part
of Carnival unfolds on the streets. Carnival's street parades have nothing
to do with the
processions
that New Yorkers line up along the curbs to see. Rio's are more like roving
parties with
blaring music,
trailing coolers of beer. Conga lines of people inevitably snake along
the sidelines,
growing longer
with each block.
"Carnival," said Trina, "is a feast produced by the Brazilian soul."
This year's Carnival
also honors Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian who turned a fruit bowl into
a
wardrobe. The
city threw a free concert of her music Saturday night, which ended with
the audience
of all ages,
colors and sizes dancing and gleefully singing "Mama, Mama I Want."
One samba parade
was dedicated to "the Brazilian bombshell," as Hollywood dubbed Carmen
Miranda, and
so was the poshest ball in town, at the Copacabana Palace.
The falling currency
has made travel here cheaper, bringing many more Americans to Brazil. Some
of
them who ended
up in black tie at the Palace seemed taken aback at first by the fast shaking
bacchanal on
the dance floor. A drag queen dressed as a wedding cake, complete with
table,
danced alongside
Carmen impersonators, sailors who looked like Popeye and a man wearing
nothing but
a Road Warrior headdress, a G-string and chains.
At 3 a.m., the
percussion section from the Salgueiro samba school marched in, decked out
in blue
and gold satin
and leading a fresh infusion of costumed samba dancers from the slums of
Rio.
Powerful nonstop
drumming drove the inhibitions from all but the most diehard of wallflowers.
By dawn, more than a few bow ties had been loosened.
Roberto Prado,
29, who worked on the samba school's scenery, said that while he worried
about
the economy,
Rio would seem alien and cold if it were not for Carnival.
"Without Carnival,"
he said, "life would have no grace"
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company