Rio’s first all-female samba school prepares defiant parade

By ELÉONORE HUGHES
Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — As Carnival approaches in Rio de Janeiro, members of samba schools perfect their minutely-timed dances and rhythms. But in the samba school in one Rio neighborhood there’s a difference. At the Turma da Paz de Madureira  _ or TPM _ there’s no man in sight. It the city’s first samba school by and for women. Fifty-year-old Barbara Rigaud is the cultural producer and hairdresser who heads TPM. She says the big samba schools are coordinated by men, but at her school, women are in charge. Her group will enter competition this year in the lowest-tier samba league. But Rigaud says she already has her sights on reaching the Sambodrome, where only the top schools compete.