No Body Left Untoned Preparing for Carnival

RIO DE JANEIRO — It was the last rehearsal of the Vila Isabel samba school at the famed Sambadrome, and Natalia Guimarães, Miss Brazil 2007, wondered if she was truly ready for Carnival.
She surveyed the high-energy samba dancers gliding down the avenue in five-inch high heels, sweat pouring off their bare stomachs as they gyrated their rear ends at dizzying speeds for an hour, with barely a minute’s rest.

Had the 25 flights of stairs she climbed each day in her hotel and the countless hours training with a samba queen and lifting weights been enough to prepare her for her role as a drum corps queen?

“They say Brazilians all have some samba in their feet,” Ms. Guimarães, a 23-year-old native of Minas Gerais, said. “I didn’t have much in mine. I know it has to improve, and I’m practicing hard.”

She is hardly alone. More than ever, it is survival of the fittest at Rio’s renowned Carnival celebration — a full-tilt sport in high heels. Women, and some men, put themselves through intense training programs months in advance. Health clubs in trendy Ipanema and Leblon offer specialized pre-Carnival boot camps aimed at putting members in the best shape of the year, and perhaps their lives, for the five-day pre-Lent celebration.

“For these women, Carnival is their Olympics,” said César Parcias, a personal trainer at Proforma gym in Leblon who teaches a pre-Carnival workout class.

Women, especially, put heavy pressure on themselves to measure up on the samba stage and in the bacchanal block parties that began winding through this city of six million people on Saturday. Sun-worshiping and visible tan lines are mandatory. Some even turn to plastic surgery for pre-Carnival adjustments.

But for most of Rio’s residents, known as Cariocas, more is never enough when it comes to Carnival. They feel that the eyes of the world are upon them, and they do not plan on disappointing.

To that end, more flesh is on the agenda this year, too.

“This year our costumes are tiny, and there are no feathers to cover our bums,” said Livia Candido, an 18-year-old dancer with the Vila Isabel samba school. “That means there’s a lot of pressure to get our bums in perfect shape.”

Marcelo Misailidis, a choreographer for Vila Isabel, said the demands to be physically fit for Carnival are growing. As samba schools get bigger, to ensure that the several hundred people in the group finish the parade in time, the samba rhythms have become faster, he said. The competition in the Sambadrome features 12 schools, each with 80 minutes to parade its way down samba “avenue.” Schools are penalized if they exceed that time. Each parader, known as a componente, is on the avenue for up to an hour.

Julio Cesar da Conceição, a fitness trainer and member of Vila Isabel’s samba troupe, estimated that during that hour, a componente dancing a frenetic samba could burn up to 1,200 calories and sweat up to a gallon of water in the humid, 90-plus-degree temperatures.

Mr. Misailidis says he remembers a time not too long ago when people who paraded down the avenue were not as physically fit. “Some would pass out halfway through,” he said. “These days, people know better.”

Just as physically demanding — especially for die-hard samba dancers — are the less formal, and often more brazen, Carnival parties and parades known as blocos. They continue for hours on end, often fueled by copious drinking. Costumes are common at these mobile parties, but they tend to be even more minimalist than the revealing sequined and feathered samba parade get-ups.

To get the Carnival-ready body, many Cariocas swear off fried food weeks before and stock up on energy bars and energy drinks, an increasing number of which contain guaraná, a caffeine-rich plant native to the Amazon rain forest. Once the Carnival parties kick off, revelers drink huge amounts of coconut water, which is thought to have broad healing powers.

Priscyla Vidal, a “muse” for the Bola Preto bloco, said a diet rich in black beans gave her the fuel to spend hours on the Stairmaster machine. “Carnival is all about vanity, but it has changed,” said Ms. Vidal, 27. “It used to exalt whoever could dance samba the best. Now it is more about who looks more glamorous.”

Mr. Parcias, the personal trainer in Leblon, knows that only too well. Last week, some 40 people attended his one-hour class. They were of all ages, but were mostly young women in form-fitting bodysuits. They seemed utterly focused, staring ahead at the mirror and never uttering a complaint.

The Carnival classes, held five days a week, begin five weeks before the event. “Some people get here before Carnival and they are desperate to start training after a full year where they’ve done almost no training,” he said. “Some people go overboard, but of course we discourage that.”

Like triathletes recovering after a race, Mr. Parcias’s students will spend the six weeks after Carnival in less-intensive workouts, a “period of recuperation,” he said.

When exercise is not enough, some Brazilians go under the knife to perfect their beauty. Angela Bismarchi had her 42nd plastic surgery on Monday. Already the Brazilian record holder for the most plastic surgeries, Ms. Bismarchi, 36, had nylon wires implanted in her eyes to give them an Asian slant, to help her look the part for this year’s theme of her samba group, Porto da Pedra: the centennial of Japanese immigration to Brazil.

Ms. Bismarchi said in a telephone interview that she had timed the operation to “be much more beautiful during Carnival.” Once it is over, she said, she will have another operation to remove the wires. “I will return to being Angela,” she said.

After Carnival, Ms. Guimarães, who has focused her months of Carnival training on having a “healthier, more muscular and curvaceous” body for samba dancing, will have to transform her body again to return to the modeling world.

“I have to get skinny again,” she said. “Being in shape by New York standards, by fashion standards, means being skinny.”