(23 Feb 2017) LEADIN:
Rio's carnival queens are going to great lengths to get in shape for the upcoming parades in Brazil.
The flamboyant festival is considered one of the biggest in the world, with around 2 million people attending each year.
Competition among samba dancers is high, with many using diet, exercise and medical procedures to get an edge on their rivals.
STORYLINE:
Rehearsing their moves in Rio's famous Sambadrome.
The Rio Carnival is a spectacle of colour and movement with samba music and dancing one of the highlights.
Samba 'drummer's queen' and actress, Paloma Bernardi, will be leading the drums of the Grande Rio samba group.
But before parade starts on Friday (24 Feb) she's hitting the gym.
"All this preparation and physical conditioning is important to withstand the 90 minutes. One must drink lots of water at the parade and food must be watched. One month in advance I try to eat lightly to enter lightly into the parade," says Bernardi.
Many samba queens, like Bernardi, start their training regime with the use of muscle building exercises.
While being a Samba queen is the utmost honour, the next step along the line is to be a samba muse, like Luciana Gimenez, a former girlfriend of Mick Jagger's and mother of his son.
They are selected for their beauty and showmanship along the parade.
In an industry where looks count, many dancers seek the treatments and exercises that can give them the edge over their competitors.
Their career often starts in the samba dancer's wing where the best of each community exhibit lean bodies and graceful movements.
Former drummer's queen, Bianca Salgueiro, is currently a muse at the Salgueiro samba group. Today she's visiting the clinic of Dr. Caroline Frota, who specialises in beauty enhancing treatments.
Salgueiro is getting amino acid injections, believing they might help her reach her desired ten percent body fat, meaning a drop of five percent.
She says: "It's worthwhile because we work on it all year round and it's a great emotion, being there, parading, looking well, it's good for a woman's ego and even for future opportunities after carnival. I believe this whole effort to be worthwhile" .
Dr. Frota says Salgueiro's leg muscles are now very strong from her gym work.
"Bianca's legs are very well moulded. She worked out a lot and she had amino acid supplements and a personalised diet, all to gain muscular mass, this is what we have been doing for the last four years."
Rio's most popular carnival queen, the model and actress Viviane Araújo, is rehearsing intensely with her dance teacher Luiz Fernando Silva.
Araújo is a regular at the Formula gym club. Besides muscle building using weights, she says dance is a must in order to boost her performance at the carnival parades.
"Dancers are happier, that's a fact," says Silva.
"Yes and what's great is that you burn calories, you become leaner, it helps me a lot," adds Araújo.
Her job is to dance in front of 300 drummers and players of various percussion instruments.
The drummer's queen is the most coveted role, and they belong to a select group of twelve, one for each of the top tier samba groups.
But this is a truly international carnival with people coming from all over the world to join in the fun.
Fifty women are participating in a new kind of event, the World Samba Congress, at a hotel in Rio.
For these women, Samba dancing in itself is the best way to enhance their body shape.
Thirteen of these women took part in the first World Samba Queen competition. Only non-Brazilians participate, all of them Samba dancers from around the world.
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