Hey, Las Vegas, here’s a taste of carnaval

By Timothy Pratt

Saturday, Feb. 2, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Rosa Costa says she doesn’t think Las Vegas is ready for the “tapasexo,” a bit of glitter that barely covers the area between a woman’s legs in Brazil’s carnaval.

Carlos Santiago, a samba dancer like Costa, jolts forward on the couch in his Summerlin home, animated: Las Vegas “society isn’t prepared for that.”

That’s why Costa’s “Samba Dolls” will wear bikinis tonight when they bring a bit of carnaval to the Risque nightclub in Paris Las Vegas.

Costa, her sculptured body still brilliant with sweat after leading the group’s final rehearsal Friday afternoon, admits she may fall short of her goal of bringing one of Brazil’s most famous cultural exports to a Las Vegas audience.

The problem: Though carnaval is a ritual of indulgence in food, music, dance and sex preceding the abstinence of Lent, Americans narrow it all down to sex, a subject they transform into something one-dimensional and prurient, she and others interviewed for this story said.

Then there’s Las Vegas, which some Brazilians see as a sort of hypocritical cover-up for that same Puritanism.

Costa, who has been in Las Vegas three years, says she sees the town’s image as deceiving. “It’s open, but not open,” she says. She doesn’t get the idea behind the now-famous ads touting Las Vegas. “Why do a man and a woman have to hide when they’re together?” she wonders.

She finds her everyday experiences here a marked contrast from the open flirting, raucous humor, slow pace and joie de vivre in her native state of Amazonas.

“You go out on the street here and there’s nothing happening,” she says.

Santiago, who works in Caesars Palace as a buffet server, sees a conflict in the gap between theory — hedonism in ads — and reality — standoffish, conservative relationships among people.

Before the rehearsal, Patrina Estrada, one of Costa’s “dolls,” notes how her American friends joke about dancing with Brazilian women. Estrada’s father is Dominican and her mother was born in the United States. “They say, ‘Oh Brazilian girls — big butts, half-naked.’

“But to me, dancing samba is a way of life.”

Estrada is the darkest of the three dancers at Costa’s rehearsal — the white, mulatto and black dancers seemed to represent Latin America’s woven racial history. She points out how samba became a part of carnaval after Brazil’s slaves were freed and moved to Rio de Janeiro more than 100 years ago.

“But I think people (from here) go (to see samba dancers) for something exotic, for the excitement,” she says.

Standing nearby, Yanelis Ramirez says she doesn’t care what people see, or think, when she dances.

“You can’t explain it to people unless you sit down and talk with each one of them,” she says.

Of course, that won’t happen tonight at the Risque.

But Costa, who says she has been dancing since she was 6, hopes some of her culture will come across to neighbors in her adopted home. She notes there may be a nostalgia, of sorts, for her and other local Brazilians who make it to the event, since many have gone back home in recent months, fleeing what they see as tightening immigration policies and a lackluster economy. Members of a local Brazilian club have estimated the valley’s population at 6,000 — but U.S. Census estimates put it at less than 1,000.

Costa remembered what it was like to meet tourists during carnaval in Brazil.

“They get drawn to the euphoria,” she says, waving her long fingers. “They want the same thing inside.”

She hopes the audience realizes that carnaval is for everyone.

“Everyone can participate. It’s something natural to us all.”