Drum Queen Short Bio: As you may have read, Belavista-Rio Carnival Blog is writing a series of posts, explaining and presenting the major samba-schools drum queens for the 2009 Rio de Janeiro Carnival. Mirella Santos is one of the next Brazilian beauties we will be describing:< Mirella was born in the south of Brazil, in Florianopolis in 1983. Since she was a small girl, Mirella practiced ballet and was invited to shoot TV commercials. After hours of hard work at gyms and dancing rehearsals, Mirella was elected Pole Position Muse at the Renault Clio Formula Cup and was soon chosen by the Brazilian version of Playboy Magazine to star one of its covers. Apart from the Rio Carnival, Mirella has two other passions, dancing and soccer, where she is a fan of her local team Havaí. As a dancer, Mirella was a permanent hire for the famous “Domingão do Faustão” TV show for two years. She was also chosen to be the “The Temptation Girl” in another TV show produced by Globo Network TV. Today, Mirella lives in Rio and is engaged to Brazilian pop-star singer Latino. She also loves going to the beach, where she tans her body and relaxes after several hours of gym workout.

MIrella Santos Drum Queen posing for Andre Muzell on the Sambadrome:



Carnival History: Mirella started her official parading at the Rio de Janeiro Carnival at the Academicos do Salgueiro Samba School. Soon after she became a national beauty celebrity, she was invited to become the Salgueiro Muse, where she would shine almost like the Drum Queen, or the Drum Section “Godmother”. Since she has a strong ballet background, Mirella thought her transition to the samba dance routines would be smooth, and she was right! Her 2008 parade was a great success with huge media coverage. She has several compliments in regards to her energetic samba dance, perfect samba-school harmony and parade choreography.


This year, Mirella accomplished one of her dreams, being invited to act as a true Drum Queen for Estácio de Sá Samba School. The school, who is part of “Access Group”, hopes to use all of her talent in order to successfully up-grade to the elite samba team, the “Special Group” in 2010. Estácio de Sá samba ´s theme for the 2009 carnival will be “Que chita bacana”, created by carnival director Cid Carvalho. Good luck Mirella in your Carnival Parade!!


Below, we Mirella Santos in the 2008 samba parade for Salgueiro.