Brasil Brazil Carnaval to spice up weekend at Jake’s

Normally you would have to fly to Brazil to experience the infectious rhythms, bright lights, colorful costumes and festive dancing of Carnaval, but Friday, all you have to do is go to Jake’s Nightclub.

The Fifth Annual Brasil Brazil: Bloomington’s Brazilian Carnaval will begin at 9 p.m. Friday at Jake’s Nightclub. The Carnaval will have authentic Brazilian music and some aerial artists.

The Carnaval is the brainchild of School of Public and Environmental Affairs  graduate student and Brazil native Anita DeCastro. In addition to organizing the event, DeCastro also helps choreograph and dance in Brasil Brazil’s authentic samba dance company, the Flores do Samba.

DeCastro has said she has planned this event since she was a sophomore, and with her graduating, this may be the last year. The event is completely volunteer-driven, from the costumes to the music and the dancers.

“I get a ton of help from students,” DeCastro said, “This year we have three interns and we get a lot of volunteers. But I think the driving force is my craziness. I usually put in
about 500 hours.”

This was the first year the Flores do Samba had auditions, and dance majors like senior Melody Cutsinger decided to give it a try.

Cutsinger, like many of the dancers, had never tried samba and learned with DeCastro’s teaching.

“Anita is amazing,” Cutsinger said, “She runs this whole Carnaval and is still making sure she is involved in the dance portion. She is sharing her personal heritage and culture with hundreds of people at a time.”

Senior Sarah Achler, one of the co-choreographers and a former dancer in the company, shares that appreciation for DeCastro’s organizing and work in putting this on for the past five years.

“I think she’s an amazing leader,” Achler said, “It has gotten better and bigger every year.”

Achler added that after three years of working on Brasil Brazil she thinks of DeCastro as a great director and a great friend.

DeCastro prides this entire event on both its professionalism and the diversity of audience that arrives every year.

“You can find a lot of college students, a lot of the Latino community, and as far as an age range, you find people from 21-60,” DeCastro said. “That’s kind of the goal. I don’t want it to be age or background specific.”

The dancers are just one attraction. There will be musical performances by the IU Brazilian Percussion Ensemble, Indianapolis DJ Kyle Long and Latin music groups El Fuego Lento and Café Cubano.

“We will finish the show with the boom, and then we’re going out in the crowd,” DeCastro said. “So the dancers will be in costume the entire night, encouraging everyone else to try it and showing them moves.”

Whether or not there will be more Brasil Brazil

Carnavals is unsure at this point. However DeCasto said she will try.

“I love it,” DeCastro said. “I would love to do this as a full-time job. And I think it would be interesting to see what Brasil Brazil would become if I wasn’t a full-time grad student.”