PHOTOS:
Thousands of revellers and samba dancers took to the street for the opening night of the annual carnival celebrations
Samba dancers wearing bodypaint, feathers, glitter- and not a lot
else – have taken to the streets of Sao Paulo for the opening of the
country’s wild carnival festivities.
Dancers from local samba schools put on a spectacular parade through the huge Sambadrome arena as up to 30,000 revellers looked on.
Similar to Mardi Gras, the five-day-long street party builds up to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Christian season of Lent.
The carnival’s excesses are considered an “act of farewell to the pleasures of the flesh,” before Lent, during which Christians are supposed to abstain from bodily pleasures.
Carnival is celebrated in towns and villages throughout Brazil, but the festivities in Sao Paulo and capital Brasilia are the biggest – with around half a million foreign tourists flocking to the country every year.
Dancers from local samba schools put on a spectacular parade through the huge Sambadrome arena as up to 30,000 revellers looked on.
Similar to Mardi Gras, the five-day-long street party builds up to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Christian season of Lent.
The carnival’s excesses are considered an “act of farewell to the pleasures of the flesh,” before Lent, during which Christians are supposed to abstain from bodily pleasures.
Carnival is celebrated in towns and villages throughout Brazil, but the festivities in Sao Paulo and capital Brasilia are the biggest – with around half a million foreign tourists flocking to the country every year.
A reveler of the Perola Negra samba school
performs during the second night of carnival parade at the Sambadrome in
Sao Paulo, Brazil on March 1, 2014 (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)
Sao Paulo’s Sambadrome hosts a huge pageant with around 30,000 revellers (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)
The festival leads up to Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)
The wild excesses of Carnival are seen as a farewell to pleasures of the flesh before Lent (Photo Credit: Daily Mirror)
Carnival began on Friday and will continue
until Shrove Tuesday – or ‘Fat Tuesday’ as it is called in Brazil (Photo
Credit: Daily Mirror)
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