Climb Aboard Brazil's Hurricane Truck of Happiness

In small cities across Brazil's countryside, performances like these are becoming a common — and beloved — sight.

Acrobatic dancers dressed as children's characters ride around on neon big rigs to perform choreographed dances at stoplights and traffic slowdowns, sending the paying passengers onboard into a frenzy.

We joined one of these mobile dance crews — the Hurricane Truck of Happiness — for two days, hanging off the back of the rig with the performers, to understand how the trend has become a popular, irreverent slice of Brazilian culture.

Viral videos have launched them onto late-night talk shows and even a McDonald's ad in recent years, while drawing more trucks into the business.

More than 100 crews, commonly known as Hurricane Trucks or Little Trains of Joy, now travel from town to town across Brazil's vast interior, charging locals about $2 to climb aboard for a joy ride.

They are, in effect, Brazil's new traveling circus, literally on wheels — and seemingly on acid.

The trucks began in the 1980s, often as smaller vehicles modified to imitate steam-engine trains for a more traditional children's show.

Over time, these trains morphed into something louder, brighter and more action packed, for a show that would also entertain adults and go viral on the internet.

The trucks competing across Brazil follow a clear formula, with similar names, costumes, choreography and music. They are heavily influenced by Brazilian funk, the nation's version of hip-hop.

Their characters include Mickey Mouse, Spiderman and Popeye, as well as names from Latin American children's programs, including El Chavo from Mexico and Turma da Mônica from Brazil.

Just about every crew tasks the best dancer with playing what has become the trucks' flagship character: Fofão.

Fofão, which roughly translates from Portuguese to mean Big Cutie, is a popular children's character from 1980s Brazilian television that has found a second life doing backflips off semi trucks.

His backstory is that he is an alien from a planet called Fofolândia, with puffy cheeks, a snout, furry hands and a mane of red hair. Fofão's creator has said he was torn between inventing a character that was a pig, a dog, a teddy bear, an extraterrestrial or a child. So he combined them all into one.

In the Fofão costume on this night was João Pedro de Souza Jr., 18, who has become one of the country's best-known truck dancers after going viral for his high-flying stunts, including flips off the top of the truck and running at full speed alongside it.

The dance crews are often on the road for three months straight, working six days a week for minimum wage, or about $250 a month.

Jackson Damasceno, 29, the co-manager of the Hurricane Truck of Happiness, said that while some dancers quit school to go on the road, the trucks have become safe havens for young men from poor neighborhoods who could otherwise get pulled into gangs.

"Most of the boys who work on these trucks smell of the streets," he said. "It ends up saving these guys' lives."

The crew rents a house in each city that it stops. While during a recent stop there were extra bedrooms in the house, the four dancers piled their mattresses onto the floor in one room to be closer together.

They awoke around midday to smoke cigarettes and scroll through videos of other trucks on Instagram. Then, after plates of rice and beans, they began getting into character, practicing their choreography and stuffing foam padding into the plexiglass heads of their costumes.

Outside the front gate, two 11-year-old boys peered in. They had spotted the parked truck on their way to a soccer field and had been sitting in its shade since. The boys had watched YouTube and TikTok videos of the trucks and were displaying some of the moves they had learned.

"We want to be the new generation," said one of the boys, Ryan Ribeiro, wearing a soccer jersey and an imitation gold chain.

Moments later, Mr. Damasceno started the truck and turned up the music. The costumed dancers climbed aboard.

"It's time to go to work," said one of the dancers, Isaque da Silva de Oliveira, 16, finishing a cigarette.

The truck pulled out, and the young boys who had been waiting all afternoon began chasing it.