‘I didn’t pay, I received a salary of R$ 5 thousand to samba’

A post of drum queen at the carnival in Rio and São Paulo can cost up to R$ 500,000. But there was a time when the position, while coveted, was not marketed. It was usually occupied by the beauties who were on the covers of men’s magazines and, consequently, in the country’s imagination. Nana Gouvêa is from that time. It was from a central poster in the extinct “Playboy” that she ended up at the carnival.

“I posed in 1996 and I wasn’t even on the cover at that time. I was also on ‘Domingão do Faustão’, I had visibility and they invited me to be a muse”, she recalls.

President Lula and Janja will not participate in the carnival and have opted for rest: the couple’s fate will not be disclosed

Irandhir Santos combines fantasy with her husband in the pre-carnival in Pernambuco

A few years later, Nana was queen of drums at Caprichosos de Pilares, where she stayed for four years. For her reign, she says, she has not paid a penny. On the contrary. “I didn’t pay, I received a salary of BRL 5,000 a month to dance the samba. My president said that I thought that that money was used to take care of my hair, put gas in the car, make costumes for rehearsals… It was a investment,” he says.

In return, she clocked in on the court at least four times a week. And that was where her biggest challenge lay: convincing the dancers that she could occupy that post. “They looked at me, skinny, blonde, young, and said that white girl couldn’t be there. At the time, I didn’t even realize it. I had so much admiration for them that I learned to samba hard. Because they challenged me, they didn’t want me teach. And each one had their own pace. From so much looking, I learned what they all did”, she recalls.

Nana samba until today. “And very well,” he guarantees. The gym’s cardio training is done to the sound of sambas de plot. But is she thinking of returning to the runway, which she left in 2009? No way! “Every year they call me. Until today. I feel honored and flattered, but today I have a real life here in New York”, justifies Nana, who has just received her license to be a realtor in the American market.

At the age of 47, dating, mother of two and grandmother of one, she no longer sees herself in the middle of the revelry and says that carnival was not a way to make a nest egg. “I never made money because of Carnival. For me, that was fun, I loved my drums, that joy of the courts”, she says.

There were not few proposals, however, which came due to her exuberance and lack of inhibition in parading almost naked. “That was a persona. A job. I never had a problem with showing my boobs. But I walked away and went back to my normal life,” she observes.

When she was practically retired from carnival (the last school was Império da Tijuca) and after doing another cover for “Playboy”, Nana received a proposal that she regrets to this day.

“There was a pagode group at the time that wanted to break out. And they proposed that I receive a monthly salary to pretend that I was dating the singer. I took my bag and left”, he reveals: “Carnival gave me wonderful things, friends, moments. But also there was a lot of disrespect. I didn’t understand much when I started, but then I became more snarky and made it clear that it wasn’t because they saw me naked that they really saw me”.