Char­lene Har­ris says danc­ing is hard. It takes a lot of work, prepa­ra­tion, and en­er­gy...but she does it with all her heart. "Au­di­ence mem­bers think that be­cause dance looks ef­fort­less, it is. But it's not easy to go up there and dance your heart out in front of an au­di­ence. Dance is an il­lu­sion."Har­ris has been danc­ing with the No­ble Dou­glas Dance Com­pa­ny since her re­turn from Eng­land in 1992, af­ter study­ing dance at Laine The­atre Arts in Ep­som, Eng­land. The en­gage­ment with ND­DC was a stroke of luck. "When I came back, it was very dif­fi­cult to get work. Alan Bal­four, a dancer I knew from be­fore, en­cour­aged me to au­di­tion for No­ble. I did one dance class, and I've been there ever since." She laughs and adds, "No­ble liked me, it would ap­pear!"A lot of dancers have to work the usu­al 8-4 job, and then turn up at the stu­dio af­ter­ward to pur­sue their true call­ing, but Har­ris has found a way to pur­sue her ca­reer full time. "But I've been won­der­ful­ly blessed. I've been able to buy my ve­hi­cle, own my home, all on my danc­ing."

Which isn't to say the fi­nan­cial sec­tor doesn't look askance at the fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of the artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty, her­self in­clud­ed. She tells the sto­ry of an in­ter­view with a loans of­fi­cer, which all went down­hill the minute her pro­fes­sion came up. The of­fi­cer her­self had danced with As­tor John­son and oth­ers. "I'm think­ing, she un­der­stands the plight of a dancer. Well, clear­ly, she didn't. I was con­sid­ered a li­a­bil­i­ty. Need­less to say, I didn't get the loan."So what's a day in the life of a pro­fes­sion­al dancer like? "Get up ear­ly and give thanks. I must ded­i­cate my time to the Lord. And then the crazi­ness starts. I go to the stu­dio, teach, get things for the kids, pre­pare for shows...."Wait, what kids? Does she have any of her own? No, but scores of chil­dren, both at Lil­liput The­atre and her own dance school, & 5678 Dance Stu­dio in Palmiste, re­ly on her to share her gift.

She doesn't see her­self as a singer at all, but she put her game face on and sang a so­lo with the Black Um­folosi, Zim­bab­we's leg­endary acapel­la group, and danced with the New York-based Reg­gie Wil­son/Fist and Heel Per­for­mance Group dur­ing the tri-lat­er­al project, Black Bur­lesque (re­vis­it­ed).But most of her work has been done right here at home. In con­junc­tion with Dave Williams, Har­ris has co-pro­duced ND­D­CI's 1997 dance sea­son, No­ble '97, and in 2010, pro­duced their 25th an­niver­sary dance sea­son, DAM 25. She was pro­duc­tion as­sis­tant on many of their sea­sons in­clud­ing SIGHTS and SOUNDS, which ran at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre this Oc­to­ber.In spite of her many achieve­ments and those of Dou­glas' col­league Heather Hen­der­son and many oth­ers in the field, Har­ris still doesn't feel that dance is where it should be in T&T. "Dance is looked up­on as a very low­ly pro­fes­sion. We're at the bot­tom of the bar­rel. You meet peo­ple and tell them you teach, and they perk up. 'Oh? What sub­ject? What school?' And then you say you teach dance, and they ei­ther frown, or they're like, 'What the hell?' They have to get over the shock."

Clients, not un­der­stand­ing how much time it takes to re­hearse for a pre­sen­ta­tion, of­ten try to cut down her in­voic­es. "They think it's just 3 min­utes of danc­ing, but the prepa­ra­tion that goes in­to it, find­ing mu­sic, re­hearsals, chore­og­ra­phy, cos­tumes." Jobs are of­ten of­fered at short no­tice. "They call the tent peo­ple and the cater­er months be­fore, but they feel they can call you two days be­fore and say, 'I want ten dancers, and I want a 5-minute piece.' Do you have any idea how long 5 min­utes of dance is?"She es­capes the frus­tra­tion of the dance in­dus­try's on­go­ing tri­als by im­mers­ing her­self in her teach­ing. "I'm a bet­ter teacher than I am a dancer, and I'm a pret­ty good dancer." She es­pe­cial­ly loves teach­ing chil­dren, as it brings her a great sense of sat­is­fac­tion and en­joy­ment.As for her naysay­ers, she shrugs. "I can't change peo­ple's per­cep­tion of me. I do my thing, whether you like it or not. I can't please every­body, and I don't want to." In spite of the mis­con­cep­tions and ig­no­rance about dance that still pre­vails, the art still en­joys a loy­al fol­low­ing... and so does Char­lene Har­ris. "I know what I want, and what it takes to get where I am go­ing. I know who I am."