Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Sade El­lis be­lieves in the con­vic­tion of her dreams and not let­ting any­one tell her what's not pos­si­ble. With this per­son­al be­lief, she is liv­ing her dream as a pro­fes­sion­al dancer.

El­lis, 28, was re­cent­ly cast as one of the lead dancers in the mu­sic video for the of­fi­cial 2014 Fi­fa World Cup theme song We are One (Ole, Ola).

This was a big break­through for the Pointe-a-Pierre na­tive, con­sid­er­ing the many chal­lenges she faced pur­su­ing this path.

Af­ter El­lis left St Joseph's Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do, she went to study com­put­er draft­ing for ar­chi­tec­ture at Flori­da Tech­ni­cal Col­lege. But the move was not one she had de­cid­ed on.

"I have al­ways want­ed to dance, but my par­ents did not think it was a wise ca­reer choice," El­lis said.

Af­ter com­plet­ing her de­gree, she had the choice of mov­ing back to T&T or tough­ing it out to dance. She chose the lat­ter. El­lis moved to LA and with lit­tle mon­ey, she be­gan tak­ing dance class­es, through what she de­scribed as "cheap" means–vis­it­ing var­i­ous dance stu­dios where she would put in about two hours' max of danc­ing, four to five days a week. This she did af­ter her part-time job as a wait­ress at a Bev­er­ly Hills, mak­ing a lit­tle above the min­i­mum wage–def­i­nite­ly not enough for her to put her­self through dance school full-time. Jobs in com­put­er draft­ing re­quired her to in­tern with­out pay, but this was not a work­able op­tion.

El­lis al­so had the chal­lenge of not hav­ing a sta­ble place to rest her head.

"I re­al­ly had no fam­i­ly out there in LA, so I was mov­ing around from place to place, rent­ing from friends, most­ly shar­ing their home or apart­ments."

But her sac­ri­fices would not go in vain. She fi­nal­ly struck lucky when she met with Clau­dia Castil­lo, a Brazil­ian chore­o­g­ra­ph­er for the Co­paca­bana Sam­bis­tas. El­lis be­gan danc­ing with Castil­lo at her dance stu­dio in San­ta Mon­i­ca, LA. Doors opened for her to gain recog­ni­tion as she and her fel­low dancers per­formed at wed­dings, par­ties, galas and cor­po­rate events. Each ap­pear­ance made the group more pop­u­lar.

On a per­son­al lev­el, El­lis al­so found her­self grow­ing, hav­ing met in­flu­en­tial peo­ple along the way. One such per­son was Jean Ju­ly, a well-known chore­o­g­ra­ph­er in LA's Brazil­ian com­mu­ni­ty. She en­cour­aged El­lis to en­ter a beau­ty pageant, Miss Brazil­ian Sum­mer Beau­ty. Al­though she says she isn't the typ­i­cal pageant girl, El­lis left such an im­pres­sion on the judges that she won, beat­ing ten oth­er del­e­gates.

"What was fun­ny about the whole thing is that the two girls who won in 2010 and 2011 were both Trinida­di­ans as well. I be­lieve it is be­cause our cul­tures are so sim­i­lar. Peo­ple would see us and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly think we were Brazil­ians," El­lis said.

A year af­ter the pageant she moved back to Mi­a­mi. El­lis had found a fam­i­ly and a home in Co­paca­bana Sam­bis­tas and oth­er Brazil­ian groups while she lived in LA. So she looked for a Brazil­ian dance group in Mi­a­mi and wast­ed no time in join­ing the Gil San­tos Car­ni­val Dance group, led by Gil, a Brazil­ian dancer/chore­o­g­ra­ph­er.

This would prove a ma­jor break­through, as it was while she was per­form­ing with his group that San­tos got word of a cast­ing call for sam­ba dancers to be fea­tured in the 2014 Fi­fa World Cup theme song's video. The song was go­ing to be sung by Jen­nifer Lopez, rap­per Pit­bull and Brazil­ian singing star Clau­dia Leitte. San­tos sent all his fe­male dancers to au­di­tion.

"I re­mem­ber it be­ing a bit nerve-rack­ing at first see­ing so many peo­ple all at once. I hon­est­ly did not ex­pect there would have been such a mas­sive turnout."

Al­though El­lis had gone with the group, every­one had to do an in­di­vid­ual au­di­tion. Some dancers per­formed zum­ba num­bers while oth­ers did sam­ba. She was one of the few who au­di­tioned in the sam­ba style and was one of the four sam­ba girls cho­sen.

"This was a re­al­ly proud mo­ment for me, be­cause when I think about me be­ing cho­sen over all the oth­er great dancers–some even be­ing ac­tu­al Brazil­ians–I feel like I have been priv­i­leged."

But be­ing cast was not the on­ly no­table mo­ment for El­lis. Meet­ing and talk­ing with Clau­dia Leitte was spe­cial.

"Meet­ing her re­al­ly made my day. I had heard of her through the Brazil­ian com­mu­ni­ties in LA and Mi­a­mi, and the sto­ries were al­ways about the great mu­sic she makes. She is a huge star in Brazil."

El­lis said she re­mem­bers most of all Leitte's hu­mil­i­ty and the en­cour­ag­ing words she of­fered the dancers.

"She was re­al­ly warm and she was quick to small-talk, dance and joke with us, which made it a lot eas­i­er for us to per­form. She did not be­have like a su­per­star at all."

The video was filmed in Mi­a­mi in about 12 hours. The dancers even taught J Lo a few sam­ba moves, as she was not in tune with the pop­u­lar Brazil­ian dance.

El­lis had wait­ed a long time for her dream of danc­ing to ma­te­ri­alise but on that day, she didn't give a thought to the strug­gle she had en­dured to get there.

"I was just so hap­py, and hon­est­ly, the mo­ment was the on­ly thing that was on my mind. 'I am here, let's get this done.'

"It was on­ly when I re­turned home that it ac­tu­al­ly hit me that I was a part of such a world phe­nom­e­non like the FI­FA World Cup, danc­ing in the of­fi­cial song's video."

El­lis re­turned to T&T in Feb­ru­ary, a month af­ter shoot­ing the video. She said she had Car­ni­val fever and just had to come home. But as a pri­vate, in­tro­vert­ed per­son, she didn't tell any­one about her re­cent suc­cess.

"To me it was not much of a big deal to go an­nounc­ing it to peo­ple. I en­joyed what I did and that was all there was to it," she said non­cha­lant­ly.

It was on­ly re­cent­ly since the re­lease of the video that she be­gan re­ceiv­ing text mes­sages and phone calls with friends ask­ing if she was ac­tu­al­ly the girl in the video. Al­most re­luc­tant­ly she would say yes.

"I am not be­ing un­grate­ful or pre­tend­ing to be over­ly mod­est about it. I re­al­ly just did not put much thought in­to it be­ing some­thing that should be broad­cast."

Since she re­turned to T&T, El­lis has been teach­ing aer­i­al dance at the Provoca­tive Fit­ness Stu­dio in Wood­brook. She plans on open­ing her own stu­dio one day but for now she con­tin­ues to fo­cus on build­ing her port­fo­lio as a pro­fes­sion­al dancer.

For those who want to pur­sue an un­con­ven­tion­al ca­reer path, El­lis says: "Fol­low your heart and fol­low your dreams and do not let any­one con­vince you it is not pos­si­ble. The jour­ney might be rough, but if it is re­al­ly what you want, you will even­tu­al­ly get there."

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