Brazil Carnival was opened last night by Rio Samba, Rio's oldest Samba group.The carnival, held in Rio de Janeiro, boasts a kaleidoscope of brightly adorned floats and more than 4,000 dancers ? who will take part in the carnival's centrepiece, a dance competition.
A panel of made up of folklorists, musicologists and carnival scholars will judge the competition, which includes of 13 dance groups from the city's shantytowns.
The competing group will mount 80-minute-long spectacles in the Sambadrome - a 60,000-seat venue built exclusively for the parades.
Those in the dancing competitions premier league are keen to stay there ? particularly as relegation to division one means a loss of thousands of pounds worth of sponsorship money.
"Being a flag bearer is almost like being a ballet dancer, it's not just samba, not everyone can do it. For me it's a way of life,' Selma Sorriso, flag bearer for the Beija Flor carnival, group told Associated Press.
The carnival, which usually rolls on well into Monday morning, will turn attention away from a spate of gun fights in Rio's shanty towns over the last week.
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