Two interesting articles about Brazilian Carnival:

1 - At Brazil's carnival celebration, samba is a hard-fought competition

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Rio's oldest samba group opened this year's carnival parade Sunday night in a fusillade of fireworks, sending 4,200 dancers and a cavalcade of opulent floats into the Sambadromo stadium.

Estacio de Sá led off its parade with a troupe of aztec-inspired dancers before a shimmering, golden float crowned with a lion's head -- its jaws in motion and a huge golden paw sweeping from side to side.

The parades last past dawn on Monday, featuring women in impossibly high heels and glittery body paint, samba dancing alongside bare-chested Adonises. Thousands of elaborately costumed dancers and hundreds of drummers escort the floats, keeping up an earsplitting rhythm.

The spectacle is more than a party; it is a hard fought competition.

Groups spend upward of a million dollars to mount 80-minute-long shows featuring hundreds of dancers, preening for a panel of judges made up of folklorists, musicologists and carnival scholars. (...)

Read the full article.

2 - Brazilians: Carnival Isn't All About Sex

Brazilians Say Carnival, Expected to Draw 700,000, Isn't All About Sex, Despite Stereotypes (By MICHAEL ASTOR)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil Feb 17, 2007 (AP)- The mere idea that U.S. soldiers on leave from Iraq see Rio's carnival as a free-floating sex party has Brazilians outraged.

A report in Britain's The Guardian newspaper that American soldiers are looking to Rio for rest and recreation especially sex tourism prompted many Brazilians to say that the gringos have it all wrong.

Despite all the jiggling, sweating flesh on display Saturday, Brazilians say the annual spectacle which is expected to draw 700,000 revelers through Tuesday isn't all about sex. It is, they say, a celebration of the body, closer in the spirit to the Olympics than a strip bar. (...)

Read the full article.

Sources: Mainichi Daily News - ABC News