March 13 - Expanding my dancing repertoire

Today we were in Parintins, a city in the far east of the state of Amazonas about 230 miles from Manaus.  The city is located on an island in the Amazon River.  The city is small in comparison to the other two places we’ve stopped on our river journey but it’s very famous for a festival held here in late June every year, the Festival do Boi-Bumbá.  That festival is second only to the Carnival celebrations in Rio and Salvador.

Boi Bumbá is a dance festival in which two teams, red and blue, attempt to outdo each other in the retelling of the legend of a resurrected bull using very flamboyant dancing, singing and floats.  The competition is staged in a stadium called the Bombódromo which can seat 35,000 spectators.  Since it isn’t June, the city has an air-conditioned auditorium where they stage a smaller production to give us tourists a taste of the festival.  At least half of the passengers went ashore to watch the show.

I didn’t know what to expect, but all I can say now is WOW!  We saw a show which at times had as many as 40 or 50 people dancing at once in a series of fantastic costumes at a frenetic pace, non-stop, for more than an hour. There were floats that were moved on and off the dance floor and singing as well.  There were no pauses even for applause.  I didn’t try taking a video, but I did get a lot of pictures and I’m going to upload a bunch of them just so you can see the wonderful imaginative costumes and maybe get a little sense of the motion.  I’m also putting a link to a youtube video about the festival so you can get a better explanation than I’ve given.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1G3Xd5mgQ0

Here are some photos which I hope give you an idea of what a production this show was.

As the show drew to an end, the dancers pulled people from the audience to dance with them, so I made my debut as a Boi-Bumbá dancer.