Rio welcomes world with sultry music, plea for conservation (Yahoo Sports)

With fireworks forming the word ”Rio” in the sky, hip-wiggling dancers and supermodel Gisele Bundchen shimmering to the tune of the ”Girl from Ipanema,” Rio de Janiero welcomed the world to the first Olympic Games in South America with a serious message: Let’s take better care of our planet. After one of the roughest-ever rides from vote to games by an Olympic host, the city of beaches, carnival, grinding poverty and sun-kissed wealth lifted the curtain on the games of the 31st Olympiad with a high-energy gala celebration of Brazil’s can-do spirit, biodiversity and melting pot history. The opening ceremony, a cut-price but welcome moment of levity for a nation beset by economic and political troubles, featured performers as slaves, laboring with backs bent, gravity-defying climbers hanging from the ledges of buildings in Brazil’s teeming megacities and – of course – dancers, all hips and wobble, grooving to thumping funk and sultry samba.