Monday night with Grupo Especial

Haven't posted any first-night reviews yet - been too busy watching the TV coverage, and, yes, recovering from a stomach bug that I'm SURE I got in Brazil. Yes, Brazil is always with me in some way or other....

The second night is well underway. My main reaction, after Grupo A's eventful night, is: No disasters in Grupo Especial! No floats on fire, no float pieces dumping unlucky girls onto the pavement, no catastrophic float breakdowns, no arms or wings ripping off of statues and lying pathetically at the feet of the dancers, no porta-bandeiras passing out from heat stroke or wrapping their flags around their flagpoles, no rainha's hair set on fire by crazy fireworks hats, and nobody fell out of the grandstand. I'm glad; no escola has had their entire year ruined by a weird fluky disaster.

On the minus side, it means that two escolas that did very good parades will have to grit their teeth and go down to Grupo A anyway. They're demoting 2 escolas again this year, the final stage in shrinking Grupo Especial down to just 12 escolas.

Here's a few snippes of O Dia's reviews from the second night at the Sambodromo:

Mocidade:
Hey!!! They did a good parade! I was so hoping they would - the one last year was a bit lame, they only JUST escaped being sent down, and I was worried for them this year. But it was really lovely. And I got to see Jonas dancing around in front of the bateria, being his fantastic Jonas self. (big sigh, wish-I-coulda-been-there). O Dia says Mocidade "showed a lot of claws" (that's a compliment) and that the crowd loved them. Tragically I had to miss the beginning of the parade because I was still teaching my class, so I missed the dance group, and now I'm extra annoyed because it turned out they did a horse dance!
O Dia loved the flag couple and says pointedly "they danced beautifully the whole way, and not just in front of the judges' booths" (as did certain other flag couples in other escolas).
Mocidade was one of the unlucky escolas this year that has to squeeze its floats under the Highway Overpass of Float Doom just as they are entering the parade. Every other escola has to do this. Escolas are perpetually trying to wedge floats that are juuuust one inch too high under this overpass. The seventh float got stuck, & they had to dismantle part of it and reassemble it afterwards in the two minutes or so as the float, already moving, entered the Avenida. "There was much running and apprehension" says O Dia. That float did slow the parade down a bit, and they all had to scurry a bit at the end to make time, but got in under the time limit.

Unidos da Tijuca:
"A creative parade" says O Dia, "with live floats", meaning floats whose main feature is zillions of people doing some kind of crazy choreography.
O Dia says that Tijuca did something unheard-of: The queen of the bateria, the mestre-sala & porta-bandeira, and the mestre of the bateria all WENT INTO Sector 1, which is one of the "people's (cheaper) grandstand areas. Sector 1 of course "went into a delirium." I'm not sure I'm reading this right because I can't imagine how they could get into Sector 1 for real, past all the fences & all with all their outfits, but there is a good hour or so lull in Sector 1 between escolas, so maybe they really did.
Paulo Barros, the famous carnavalesco who brought Tijuca to fame some years back, but is now with Viradouro, watched Tijuca's parade from the gathering-area. Tijuca's president had said last night, about Viradouro's parade: "The parade of the last escola of the night last night was like a Hollywood show and wasn't Carnaval." Barros responded tonight: "It's easy to talk.... The signature of Paulo Barros will be on Tijuca for many years to come."

Imperatriz:
"Highs and lows" is O Dia's summary. On the whole, a solid parade that redeemed them somewhat from the bad parades of the previous three years. A member of the dance group fell and needed help getting up "but luckily none of the judges saw it" says O Dia - I think somebody could die and it'd be ok as long as it didn't happen in front of a judge's booth. Imperatriz also had their fifth float get stuck under the notorious Highway Overpass of Float Doom. "It caused despair and running" says O Dia succinctly, but they solved the problem just in time, with a bit of a gap that the judges probably couldn't see. All's far in love, war, and the Sambodromo, as long as the judges don't see.

Vila Isabel:
Beautiful parade marred only by a huge parade gap at one point, or as O Dia's headline put it, "Gap could take title from Vila". Steller flag-pair couple (oh, that's what "estreante" means, stellar, I should have guessed!) Third float gave out a huge puff of smoke on entering the Avenida, firefighters came, but no fire, and it managed to parade fine. The Miss Brasil rainha-who-can't-samba, Natalia Guimaraes, said afterwards that it's "much harder to be rainha than to be Miss." O Dia says:
"Entering the Avenida is incredibly emotional. That surge of energy is very "tasty" (wonderful) said the beauty, who confessed to being very nervous and to having cried a lot. At the end of the parade, the beauty was grabbed by "beijoqueiro" (kiss-wanters) and had to be helped by security."

Grande Rio:
"One of the favorites despite its horrible theme" says O Dia. I've got to agree - a samba that celebrates oil? And yet, surprisingly, the parade was absolutely beautiful. Extraordinary commissao de frente (they had a super-cool silver ball structure that they kept climbing and spinning inside around), an entire float of shiny people tumbling inside gigantic whirling silvery molecular structures (how much Dramamine was on that float? I can't imagine surviving that for even two minutes), life-size robotic Tyrannosaurus Rexes (who died and became oil, don't you know)... and the killer bateria. It's always hard to hear the bateria on the O Globo broadcast but I heard a break go by that had some stunning third-surdo rolls. I really liked that they had a whole row of wheelchairs in the front row of the Amazon ala, with awesome Amazon wheelchair decorations of course. And of course I adored the gigantic jaguar holding a tiny jaguar cub in its mouth.

The queen of the bateria, Grazi Massafera, was "radiant" after the parade. It was her second year. She said "Parading is an addiction. After the first time we want it forever."

Beija-Flor:
Hasn't been broadcast yet here in the US - they've got us on a four-hour delay or so - and I've got to get to bed. I'm taping it and will watch it later, but I can already see O Dia's review here on the website: "Beija-Flor close to bicampeonato" - that means winning two years in a row. Hmm.