“I just broke down crying the first time.”
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“I didn’t know how to do anything – how to put on makeup, how to do my hair – and I was so embarrassed the first time I had to perform in my costume,” she said, referring to the passistas’ itsy-bitsy bikinis, which generally are kitted out with feathers, a generous sprinkling of sequins and towering platform heels. Prado made her Carnival debut at age 19, after auditioning for a spot with the Sao Clemente samba school, one of the dozen top-tier schools that compete for the coveted title of the year’s best in two all-night-long parades Sunday and Monday at the city’s iconic Sambadrome.Īt first, she said, her moves were amateurish compared with other passistas, even though like other Rio natives she had grown up dancing the samba. “I’m from Rio and grew up with Carnival, loving Carnival, so it’s amazing to be this close to someone who lives Carnival every day.” “We see how determined she is, how she busts her butt to get everything done, and it’s really admirable,” said saleswoman Ana Lucia Oliveira. Prado insists her double life doesn’t detract from her authority as boss, and her staff agrees. It would be a difficult thing to hide, she said with a laugh: She often comes into the office carrying oversize feather headdresses or applies her fake lashes and extravagant glitter makeup in the restroom there before rushing off to rehearsals. The 15 employees who work under Prado also know about her other profession. “She’s good about trying to put in all her hours, but when she can’t, we kind of look the other way,” he said with a wink. Her fingernails, acrylic appliques in shimmering gold glitter that produce rapid-fire clicks as she types, are the only visible clue as to her double life.
“I get up, run to dance class, come to work, go to rehearsal and fall into bed,” Prado said at her office, looking every inch the career woman in olive slacks, demure beige sweater and dark framed glasses. So when they aren’t rehearsing or tending to their sculptural figures, many passistas work as secretaries, store clerks or maids.
Though passistas are unquestionably the star attractions of the world’s most iconic Carnival celebrations now under way in Rio de Janeiro, they’re not on the payroll of the samba schools they represent. Like many samba dancers, or “passistas” as they’re known in Portuguese, the 26-year-old splits her time between the feathers, body paint and shrunken bikinis of Carnival and the workaday office reality of headsets and cubicles. But when night falls, she dazzles as a scantily clad samba school dancer in over-the-top performances glittery enough for a Hollywood musical. RIO DE JANEIRO – It’s a life of stark contrast: By day, Diana Prado is a supervisor at an insurance company’s drably lit call centre cramped with blue cubicles.
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