Photos: Over 3,000 performers dazzle as Rio celebrates carnival

Rio De Janeiro: Glistening with sequins and sweat and shimmying to sultry samba beats, thousands of performers danced their way down a Rio de Janeiro avenue Sunday in the Brazilian beach city's famed carnival parades.

With whimsical floats, thundering drum sections and legions of performers in fanciful costumes, 12 samba schools are competing for the coveted title of carnival champions across two nights of epic dancing.

Rio has already been celebrating carnival for weeks with colorful, free-for-all street parties known as 'blocos.'

Sunday's and Monday's parades are the climax: sumptuous festivals of color and sound that last all night and into the next day.

A capacity crowd of 70,000 spectators cheered from the packed stands of the Sambadrome stadium, the city's purpose-built parade venue, with millions more expected to watch live on TV.

Each samba school has 60 to 70 minutes to dazzle its way down the 700 meters of Marques de Sapucai, the avenue through the concrete carnival parade temple designed by modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer.

A jury judges each down to the minutest detail, with potentially devastating fractions of points deducted for being out of sync, running over time or lacking flair.

Pulling together a show with more than 3,000 performers and a fleet of seemingly gravity-defying floats is no easy feat.

The samba schools spend the entire year preparing - and often face a down-to-the-wire race to get ready.

Invented a century ago by the descendants of African slaves, samba is one of the great symbols of Brazilian popular culture, and of Rio.

Today, carnival is big business for Rio: the party is expected to generate 5.3 billion reais (more than $1 billion) in revenue this year.

Members of the Imperatriz Leopoldinense samba school perform during the first night of the Carnival parade at the Marques de Sapucai Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro early on February 12, 2024.