Sunlight seeps through holes in the roof, illuminating the graffiti-covered walls of an abandoned building where kids created a makeshift dance studio in Rio de Janeiro's Borel shantytown. Beads of sweat form on the young dancers' foreheads, then plop onto a dusty concrete floor as the teens glide and pop, shake and dip in a dance form called "passinho," or "little step." Passinho has been around for years, but it recently began spreading through social media, with dancers posting videos of their moves on YouTube and Facebook, sometimes drawing thousands of followers. The dance is most popular in Brazil's poor favelas, where many credit it with keeping young people out of trouble and away from local gangs. In fact, the dance's popularity has benefited from a police crackdown on another late night activity, more raucous "baile funk" parties often organized by criminal gangs and marred by drug use, violence and incidents of young girls being exploited. The dance's new superstars include Borel slum resident Hilton Santos da Cruz Jr., known as "Hiltinho Fantastico" — Fantastic Little Hilton. Cruz flashes a smile stretching from earring to earring when he talks about going from watching passinho videos online to being crowned a "little step" champion earlier this year on one of Brazil's most popular TV variety shows. During the competition, his rail-thin frame twisted, glided and slid over the floor. "In the past, so many kids were involved in trafficking, or not leaving their house," said Cruz. "Today, passinho is changing everything, helping those on a dangerous path. Me, too." Nicolas Tanner/AP

Brazil considers itself the economic powerhouse of the 21st century, a modern day success story of democracy. And this idea will only be strengthened as the state attempts to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. And yet, in the summer of 2013, after the government tried to increase public transportation costs, the streets slowly began to fill with people seeking answers. They wanted to know where all the increased revenue was going. If Brazil is really a new world power, people were wondering, shouldn't basic expectations like education and health care, for example, be available to the booming middle class. As the protests, the first popular protests in Brazil for 20 years, grew in number a slogan emerged. "O Gigante Acordou" translates into "The Giant has Awoken." This essay documents the popular uprisings and violent clashes over the summer of 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, as Brazil's citizens awoke and demanded to be heard by their government.