Viva, America!

Day 17, Monday, January 6, 1997

When I woke up, we were already in Leblon. The bus had looped around from the north and was now going eastward towards Ipanema. There are several places to see a samba show in Leblon. Top of the list in LP is Scala. We went to check it out, but found that it was closed. There were no shows on Mondays or Tuesdays. We weren't going to give up. There were a couple of mid-aged guys hanging around. They gave us directions to La Plataforma, number two on the LP list.

While Scala was all dark and gloomy and dead, La Plataforma was all glitz and action. The stage is on the second floor. The first floor is a nice and big restaurant. We bought tickets for the show. I had dinner in the restaurant. Ed's sore throat was getting worse. He had a little to drink, but didn't get any solid food. He mostly watched me work on the slab of Brazilian BBQ steak the waiter had recommended, listened to my monologue, and once in a while replied in single syllables. There we were in sticky T-shirts. All around us, most of the customers were neatly dressed like they were actually here to see a show.

I was told that one has to tip the maitre d' to get a better seat at a Vegas-type show, so I prepared a tip for him. He took us to the first row on the right side of the stage. I don't know if the tip mattered. A catwalk extends from the stage, so the best seats are probably the front rows of balcony. The ensemble of dancers would be on the main stage but the center of attention was usually on the catwalk. It was slightly taxing on my neck, but sitting in the first row did have its advantages. Most of the dancer coming out of the right side passed right in front of us.

Before the show started, two or three dancer came around the theater, striking sexy poses with people in the audience. When one of them took Ed in her arms, the audience went all whistling and ooo-ha'ing. I am sure it wasn't for Ed. The resident photographer would then take a picture, present it to you after the show, and extort 11 reals. It's all voluntary, though. No one had to buy the picture if he didn't want to. I heard several murmurs of "Once pesos!" before they coughed up the dough. Ed for some reason didn't like the photo, but I kept mine.

I have to admit that samba is a sensual dance. The message was certainly not lost in the opening dance, where a group of shapely mulatas came out in nothing but a hint of bras, thong, ankle cuffs, and some headdress, all singing and sambaing. Many more dances were put on in colorful costumes of different themes. The skimpiness of their costumes was in fact an illusion. They had more clothes on than most people on the beaches. They wore semi-opaque panty hoses under the thong bikinis. It became apparent if the color of the panty hose and the skin color of the dancer didn't match well. Ed showed the samba pictures to his friends in church, but he couldn't convince them that it wasn't a strip show. For Pete's sake, there were children in the audience.

The men had their own routines playing drums and doing acrobatic stuff. But I'll skip that part.

I didn't at all find the show to be touristy like LP says, until some host had to come out and name all the different countries. Then the dancers came out in costumes with little flags sticking on their backs. When the song and dance was over, he started to asked where the people in the audience were from. There was a block of Chileans. There were a few Argentineans, a few Europeans from a variety of countries. There was also a Japanese couple, and a lone Chinese girl who seemed to be in the company of some Argentineans. The guy was naming one country after another. We waited. He got to, "United States of America!" We looked around. No one else. No one else? We raised our hands. If he was surprised that we claimed to be Americans, he didn't hide it very well.

"Americans?" he questioned.

"Yes," we answered.

"No Japanese?" he wanted to confirm.

"No."

"Americans?!"

"Yes."

"No Japanese?!"

"No."

"Americans."

"Yes."

"Stand up."

We stood up, made ourselves known to the other people. Ladies and gentlemen, this ought to be a good opportunity for you to learn, if you don't already know, that Americans do come in all colors and stripes.

He asked the Japanese woman to come up onto the stage. The band played some music that must be very popular in Japan, and she sang. An Argentinean couple was drafted to demonstrate their famous kiss. An Austrian woman danced a waltz with the host. More audience participation. Not terribly interesting. I had the bad feeling that sooner or later it'd be the Americans' turn on the chopping block. And there weren't enough Americans to go around tonight to spare me the embarrassment.

"Viva, America!"

Ohh..., shit! I knew claiming to be American would get me into trouble one day. Should've just said that we were Chinese, and then that would be the end of it. Now the spotlight was on us. Ed backed off shaking his head, and said, "I can't. I have a sore throat. You go." Wow, three complete sentences! Where was the sore throat? And he pushed me forward. This sure was a great time to find out who my real friends were.

They played some music. I didn't know what it was. I tried to find some ballroom step I know that might fit it. I drew a complete blank. Actually, we should've claimed to be Austrians, then he would get one of the mulata dancers to waltz with me. All right, I'll just move my feet, shake my body. Then he did some Rockette's kicks with me. Left, kick, right, kick, ... No, no, not the high kicks. In the end, he asked me to do this pointing thing with the my hand with a drum roll. He wasn't satisfied with the way I did it. He showed it to me. I did it. Still not good. Once more. He gave up.

Oh, yeah, that's right. The music was "New York, New York."