Rio's Carnival celebrates dance, music and flesh

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 20 (Reuters) Brazil's Carnival has always been a raucous affair and beauty queen Angela Bismarchi took it another step further when her only item of clothing, a small patch of glitter, fell off mid-parade.

Bismarchi was the talk of the town on the second and final night of Rio de Janeiro's centerpiece Carnival parades yesterday, where full nudity is officially banned even though many outfits leave precious little to the imagination.

The young woman, queen of the Porto da Pedra samba school, was briefly left entirely naked but for a few feathers and some body paint when her ''tapasexo'', a tiny piece of material topped with glitter, fell away.

But Bismarchi quickly conjured up a thong and carried on dancing, later laughing off the incident with an old Brazilian saying: ''A well prepared woman is worth two.'' The night's parades featured thousands of spectacularly dressed dancers shaking and singing their way along the city's Sambadrome to a ferocious rhythm of drums.

''It's a thrill. I enjoy the people, I enjoy the costumes,'' said French movie star Vincent Cassel, on his third Brazilian Carnival, in one of the Sambadrome's VIP boxes. ''The party here is really beautiful.'' Thirteen samba schools from poor neighborhoods parade over two nights to compete for the title of Carnival champion, and are judged on their floats, music and dancing.

The floats yesterday night included huge animals and songs honoring African culture, and others devoted to photography and sports.

Porto da Pedra's theme was the struggle of South Africa's blacks against apartheid. It included a huge statue of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela, sections of people dressed as tigers and a float representing police repression.

In a parade paying tribute to the art of photography, the Unidos da Tijuca samba school brought images of the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and Egypt's Pyramids.

Floats with giant statues of African warrior queens and Egyptian pharaohs, presented by the Salgueiro samba school, left clouds of glitter in the air as they passed.

The last school to take center stage will be one of Rio's most traditional, the Beija Flor, at dawn today.

This year's celebrations were held amid a surge in violence in Rio's slums with dozens killed in police gunfights with drug traffickers and turf battles between rival gangs.

The dead included a leader of the Salgueiro samba troupe, gunned down with his wife in their car as they left the school's training ground last week.

A government crackdown intensified in the days leading up to Carnival with police occupying some of the city's slums, knows as favelas.

Banners along the Sambadrome had calls for peace emblazoned on them yesterday night. Despite the violence, officials say about 700,000 tourists descended on the city for Carnival.

REUTERS SY SSC1257