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Press, 6 March 1987, Page 6

By

STEPHEN POWELL

of Reuters (through NZPA) Rio de Janeiro At Rio’s Gala Gay ball, one of the highlights of the dying hours of carnival, the men put on women’s clothes while the women wore little at alt Men, women and persons of indeterminate sex danced on the tables, hugged, kissed and preened themselves for the cameras until the ball finished just after 5 a.m. yesterday (local time). Across the two packed ballrooms of Rio’s biggest nightclub there is much to catch the onlooker’s eye, including a good number of hands doing their own wandering on bodies both

male and female. In the corner of the upper ballroom dance floor two men passionately kiss. Just to their left, a man with a long blonde wig and ear-rings dances on the table dressed in a G-string and coloured patches on his “breasts.”

Beyond him is a mass of seething, gyrating humanity covered in streamers constantly thrown through the air. On another table, a paunchy Viking with horned helmet and a fetching green and pink skirt tries to kiss a shapely feminine figure in a red dress. You quickly fail into the sex guessing game. Is that person dancing topless on yet another table a man or a woman?

The ample bottom certainly looks feminine and so at first glance does the equally ample bosom. But then doubts creep in — the breasts seem too firm and too rounded at the top to be a woman’s.

The Rio carnival has become a main world attraction for homosexuals, who fly in on special charters from the United States and Europe.

Gays are prominent in the carnival festivities, both in the street dances and in the two spectacular parades of the top samba “schools” through the specially built “sambodromo” stadium.

In the Copacabana district transvestites stroll along the seafront in flowing dresses and extrava-

gant hats. Carnival is the time of maximum ostentation. Arriving at the Gala Gay ball, transvestites pass along an elevated walkway with hips swaying and heads held high. There is always a crowd in the street below to play the necessary role of audience.

Not that the onlookers are invariably appreciative. As homosexuals left the ball yesterday morning they ran the gauntlet of a few dozen Brazilians who had turned out to mock and jeer. Catcalls filled the air.

But it would be hard to imagine the festivities without the homosexuals. “They are a part of carnival,” said one Rio resident