‘He was gangly but very polite, says dancer who sambaed with Charles in 1978

Forty-four years before inheriting the British throne, the now King Charles III, then a 29-year-old single boy, starred in a moment that went down in the history of Rio’s Carnival.

It was 1978 and after two days in São Paulo, where –oh!– he fell off his horse at a polo event, he landed in Rio. One of his appointments was at Palácio da Cidade, the city hall, where, among other agendas, he would attend a performance by the samba school Beija-Flor de Nilópolis.

A girl in costume and with a good part of her slender body on display took him out to dance. She wiggled, smiled, tried to put him at ease, even though she had no idea who it was. “I didn’t even know who he was”, she recalls, in an interview with F5Maria da Penha Ferreira, Pinah, bulwark of the school, at the time an 18-year-old dancer.

School presentations to politicians and businessmen were common (and still are), but everything indicated that there would be a special presence, so many were the protocols. “The head of the security guards warned us that we couldn’t cross a line. They put a banner on the floor and warned that it was to samba from that line to the back, it was full of rules”, says Pinah.

The thin boy, wearing a tuxedo and with his hair parted to the side, approached and… started to dance Charleston. “I had no idea who he was, and the first thing I noticed was that he was very gangly,” Pinah recalls.

She only found out that it was the prince at the end of the party, and was surprised. “I never imagined he would blend in.” Images of the prince trying to keep up with the dancer, in her own way, went around the world.

It was speculated that Charles must have been a little calibrated. Pinah denies it. “He was very nice and he wasn’t drunk,” assures Black Cinderella, as she has been known ever since.

Since then, Pinah got married, moved (to São Paulo), had a daughter, opened a store selling carnival goods, and kept in touch with the royal family.

You can’t say they have a bond of friendship, but almost. In 2012, Pinah met Harry, the youngest of Charles and Diana, when he came to Rio de Janeiro. Liked. “The redhead is friendly and polite, like his father.”

She now hopes to be invited to the new king’s coronation ceremony, on a date yet to be set. “I’m almost a queen, his other women came after me”, laughs Black Cinderella.