Brazilian Street Carnaval brings a rhythmic rainbow of brilliant colors to downtown Long Beach

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atching Doris de Hilster put together a headdress, one would hardly be surprised if she were to next start spinning straw into gold. De Hilster is the mastermind (and fingers) behind the lavish costumes performers will wear in Sunday's Ninth Annual Brazilian Street Carnaval as they samba their way down the Long Beach Promenade to the Amphitheater in a rousing program of Brazilian festivity and celebration. Doris, a native of Rio de Janeiro, and her American husband, David, have been the driving force behind Carnaval (the Portuguese spelling) since 1996, when it was almost discontinued for lack of funding. Through their SambaLa Samba School, which David founded in 1994 to console his then-homesick wife, the de Hilsters not only saved the carnaval, but redefined it to reflect more closely its cultural roots. Together with Varig Airlines and RioBela Productions, SambaLa (loosely translated as "Samba, There') now presents a stateside carnaval they believe is second in size only to that of New York's. After seeing any of Doris de Hilster's creations, it's hard to believe she had no experience designing carnaval costumes before coming to America. "I didn't know anything," she says. "I didn't know what I was doing. I looked at pictures (thinking) maybe I can figure out something." And she did. She ingeniously took ordinary visors, flipped them upside down, and by adding feathers, fabric and trimming, transformed them into majestic headpieces.

IN MAGNIFICENT FORM

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ow she orders wire headpiece frames from Brazil which she painstakingly wraps, ace-bandage style, with ribbon. Then with a wave of her glue gun, she performs her magic, assembling glittering sequins, luscious pearl and bead trimmings, shimmering fabrics in every color of the rainbow (most pastels have been banished) and lots of feathers until -voila! (or the Portuguese equivalent) -a magnificent headpiece appears that would shame the most brilliant of peacocks. Sitting in her workroom in the back of a friend's property, her petite frame is dwarfed by the floor-to-ceiling supplies that pack the room. Seven sewing machines with different settings (single-needle, overlock, buttonhole) compete for space with costumes in various stages of completion, thread and trimmings in every imaginable color, piles of fabric and, of course, the ubiquitous feathers. "It takes about five hours to make one headdress," de Hilster says, adding, "You really have to like what you're doing. Otherwise, it doesn't work." Carnaval goes back 500 years to pagan celebrations in medieval Greece and Italy that somehow found their way into Roman Catholic pre-Lenten traditions. In the 16th century, the Portuguese brought carnaval with them to Brazil, where it evolved, responding to socioeconomic factors as well as Indian and West African influences, until in 1928 the samba schools came to the forefront as the defining force. In Brazil, samba schools are not schools per se but neighborhood centers that can have as many as 5,000 members. They not only represent their area in carnaval but offer vital community services such as job placement, child care and athletic programs.

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oris de Hilster, who also owns and manages Tony's Famous French Dips and Grill from Ipanema, holds the title of carnavelesca, or art director, and in addition to headpieces constructs skirts, dresses, shorts, bikinis and Carmen Miranda costumes for an international clientele. Not everyone, though, gets to wear her bikinis. "A lot of people want to wear a bikini just because they think it's beautiful and they have a beautiful body. But that's not the idea. To put on a bikini you have to be able to really dance." Monica Tibbs, carnaval choreographer, calls it "passing the Doris test." "They don't just throw anybody into a bikini," Tibbs says. "If you tell Doris you want to dance in a bikini, then she\'ll say, \'Let me see you samba."\' Tibbs, a native of Los Angeles, is the supreme example of this year's carnival theme, "Samba Without Borders," a saying coined by Brazilian samba personality Mestre Fiascca. Unlike many in Brazil, Fiascca preaches the message that even foreigners can samba, and Tibbs is living (or dancing) proof. Six years ago, Tibbs was pursuing her career in classical, professional dance when she became interested in Latin, Balinese and African forms. On a day off from school, she decided to attend a samba class at SambaLa. "I went down there to take a lesson, and I've been there ever since," she says. "Out of any dance I've ever done, the thing I like most about samba is the freedom. It's not restricted." Tibbs, who has danced and choreographed samba in Brazil, is choreographing three dances for the school to perform to the perpetual theme song in the parade. "The theme song, they sing it throughout the parade, so it goes on and on and on," Tibbs says.

INTENSE SINGING

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n Brazil, "They sing the same song over and over for an hour and 20 minutes," says Michael Carney, director of percussion at Cal State Long Beach. "It's really intense. And the audience is all singing, too." Carney also directs CSULB's World Percussion Group (African and Brazilian music) and Steel Drum Orchestra (Caribbean music), and one of Sunday's headlining groups, Badaue Bloco, is comprised of his former students. He was a part of David de Hilster's International Samba School that in 2000 became the first non-Brazilian school allowed to play for the Rio de Janeiro Carnaval in their famed 85,000-seat Sambadrome. Each year since then he has taken students, faculty and performers to Brazil so they can study the music and culture firsthand. "Samba is a generic term, similar to what jazz is in America," Carney explains. "It's not just one type of music. It's a dance, it's a rhythm, it's a type of music." Carney describes a typical carnaval bateria, or percussion unit, as consisting of the surdo (bass drum), the "heartbeat" of the samba; repinique (tenor drum); caixa (snare drum); and a variety of hand-held instruments like the agogo (brass double bell), tambourim (a type of tambourine played with a stick), ganza (a large metal tube filled with beads) and the panteiro (another tambourine-like instrument that replicates all the instruments), which performers not only play, but twirl, throw and juggle. In case one parade isn't enough, a trio-electrio parade is being added this year after the traditional Rio-style parade. "The Rio style has been around for 90 years and has a big drum corps and pageantry -a lot of pageantry," says David de Hilster. In contrast, the more recent trio-electrio parades that are popular in northern Brazil are more free-form in presentation. "You don't have to dress up or spend thousands on a costume," says De Hilster. "It's more cool among the kids." Spectators can become part of Sunday's trio-electrio procession simply by purchasing one of the parade T-shirts.

GROWING ATTRACTION

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hether it's the parade, the music, or the costumes, people continue to be drawn to carnaval and the Brazilian culture in growing numbers in countries ranging from Japan to Finland. "I think of Carnaval as celebration of life," says Carney. "In our society, we're not all connected so well. We lose a sense of community. SambaLa, that's a community group, a way that people can get connected, not just with the music, but connect as members of a community." David de Hilster describes it another way. "The problem is, the United States is all work, even more than Japan. People don't sing, people don't dance and people don't play an instrument. And it's sad, really, because that's part of the human dance. So people adopt Brazil, which is a wonderful model of fun. Because the Brazilians are very free, they're not inhibited. It's a model of how everybody can participate." A refrain from the carnaval theme song says it well: "Samba has no borders/It has brought down barriers/In the four corners of the world it has arrived/making the Brazilian proud." That's a message worth repeating, on and on.

Caryn Fugami can be reached at (562) 499-1254 or by e-mail atcaryn.fugami@presstelegram.com