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Renni Flores
A voice from god, Renni is from Bahia and does not come out for just any ocassion. Luckily, she has agreed to be part of this great Carnaval event and lend her voice, power, and composing skills to this year's event. She was chosen this year to compose the 2008 theme song about children.
Renni Flores native of Bahia, Brazil. Bahia is considered the soul and heart beat of Brazil. Renni started singing at the age of 5, and in the early 80s she became the first woman in Bahia to sing with the group Bloco Afro Ilê Aiye in carnaval. She has the full rich sound needed to sing alone with drums of northeast Brazil. From there she performed at various festivals and directed her own folkloric dance company Bahia Magia, one of Brazil’s leading groups. Working with the state government, they toured worldwide.
Click here to visit her website.
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SambaLa Dancers
They say the drums call the audience, and the dancers keep them there. One of the groups performing at this year's Brazilian New Year's Party is the SambaLeza Dancers from SambaLa.
Director Valeria Ruggieri joined SambaLá over 9 years ago when Doris, the SambaLá director gave her a crash course in samba and sent her off with the SambaLá performers group to Seoul Korea for a show for 100,000 people for Kia Motor's world-wide launching of the "Rio" Car. She was the most photographed dancer in the group and from that day on, she was hooked on Samba. Since then, she has worked her way up in the ranks and has danced on Jay Leno and Nickelodeon with Will Smith and even helped one of the contestants and appeared on "Dancing with the Stars" (see the video here).
She has worked her way from dancer, to princesa da bateria, rainha da bateria, and now madrinha da bateria. She teaches advanced samba dance and is creating special choreographies for the Street Carnaval. She also is an event planner and owner of Rio Bela Productions, and is vice-president of SambaLá Samba School, a non-profit organization.
SambaLa Bateria
They say that the heartbeat of samba is the bateria or percussion unit. For SambaLa it is no different. Samba is infectious and has attracted many talented musicians to SambaLa.
Besides the mestre of the Bateria, Carlinhos do Pandeiro, SambaLa is lead by director Jason Brancazio. He has written and arranged many of the breaks for samba songs during carnaval and will be leading the breaks for this year's Brazilian New Year's Eve Party.
The bateria will include 10 members of this impressive percussion group including Jesse Kitten, John Crahan, Marcello Sanchez, David de Hilster, Michael Ruggieri, Taura Smith, Aurtur, Robert Wade, Denish Mandalia, and others.
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