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North Tahoe native wants to ‘link the community together’ (w/ video)

Tim Hauserman
Special to the Sun
Charline Bennett has lofty asipriations — and she wants to do it all here at Lake Tahoe.
Photos courtesy Marie Adair Photography |

TAHOE CITY, Calif. — Is it possible to survive in Tahoe while pursuing dance, modeling and acting?

North Tahoe High School 2005 graduate Charline Bennett is hoping to make it happen. She is studying dance, creating videos and developing a portfolio of photos that will hopefully attract the attention of the people who could put her up on the screen.

While she was growing up in North Tahoe, Charline didn’t have the opportunity to attend dance classes. But she always loved to dance in front of the TV while watching Michael Jackson videos.



Now, she is doing her best to make up for lost time by studying dance at Truckee Meadows Community College.

This past fall Bennett, with a group of friends, created a Snow Dance Video for a contest put on by Squaw Valley. The video, which features Charline attempting to dance some snow into our hearts, has garnered more than 16,000 views.



Her friend, Sarah Howe, who plays The Wolf in the video, says that Charline’s “vision is incredible. She told me her concept for the video and it was great to see it coming to life.”

And Bennett has plans for more videos.

“I want to get into directing and photography, doing creative things,” she said. “I want to link the community together. I’ve been meeting lots of people and we all trade each other for our time and energy.”

‘I LOVE IT HERE’

So why is she still here when the artistic opportunities are elsewhere?

“I don’t feel like trying out for all this stuff in LA and SF. I love it here so much,” she says. “I’m looking for the way I can get all my creative energy out in the healthiest way possible. I want to get people to laugh.

“And I also want to inspire people to get through a tough time.”

Charline has been in love with the movies since her film-buff father got her hooked when she was a young child, but she says, “I don’t want to live in a city I don’t like.”

She feels that the people there “are not real. It is all a show. This way I can do what I want and if someone sees something they like, I can deal.”

If you don’t want to go to the city to get into the movies, you have to come up with another way for the powers that be to find out who you are.

Charline has been modeling for five years, building up a profile of pictures that will hopefully entice some agent or director to reach out to her.

Whether she’s being sexy in a boudoir shot, covered in fruits and vegetables for a magazine cover, or dressed as Marie Antoinette looking like the cover of a bodice ripper romance novel, Charline has been experimenting with displaying her unique, smoldering Brazilian beauty.

“One of the reasons we continue to work with Charline is because of her creative ideas and fun personality,” said Anna Peralez, from Marie Adair Photography. “It’s hard to pursue any kind of modeling, acting or performing arts career living in the Tahoe area.”

‘LOVE WHAT YOU DO’

One of the first things Charline learned about modeling is it is hard work. Try spending an entire day being utterly still while people slowly put food all over your body.

But Charline is used to hard work. She has been a bartender, a barista, lift op, ticket checker, assistant manager at a clothing store, rafting company employee, and for a short period of time, a go-go dancer at the Club Peek in South Lake Tahoe.

“That got old so fast,” she says.

Now, she is up at sunrise to clean Pete ‘N Peters and the Bridgetender, having just taken over her mother’s cleaning business called “Non Stop Cleaning.”

To find time for the creative side while paying the bills, “You really have to love what you do. If you don’t, it will not work. The schedules are so grueling,” she says.

Charline wants to be behind the camera. She wants to be in front of the camera. She wants to teach dancing. She wants to direct videos. She wants to live at Lake Tahoe.

And her friends and mentors think she just might be able to do all those things. Long-time North Tahoe High School science teacher Dick Lingle says, “she is very up front with people, knows what she wants and is willing to work hard to achieve her goals.

“I must say though, that dissecting squid in the lab was probably not her forte.”


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