Passinho meets 'os Jogos': street dance craze invented in Rio hits the Olympic Games
Updated 09/08/2016 — 13H03We know cariocas can perform the steps, but how good are they when they are holding a basketball at the same time?
The residents of Rio de Janeiro love to party. At the Olympic Games, everyone's invited. (Photo: Getty Images/Mario Tama)
Dance, music and song are never far away in Rio de Janeiro. In the last few years, a new craze has hit the clubs and the streets: passinho, a style of dancing which evolved from the carioca funk scene, became popular in huge outdoor parties in favela communities and has now taken the entire city by storm.
When a dancer called Beiçola recorded a video of himself and friends demonstrating the dance at an afternoon BBQ in 2008, it went viral, registering over four million hits. Dancers from other communities began to upload their own home-made clips, and the dance quickly spread across the city.
Since then the dance has gone global. At the Olympic Games opening ceremony on 5 August, the 'old' Brazilian flavours of bossa nova and samba met the new sounds of funk and passinho.
Rio Northern Soul: underpass dancers ‘charm’ their way into Rio 2016 ceremonies casts
At the bustling Rio 2016 live site entertainment area in Madureira in northern Rio, the organisers of Rio 2016 decided to throw a basketball into the mix. Watch what happened here:
