HEY, THORNHILL: the dance world has uncovered the secret ballet weapon that few knew we had.
Sixteen-year-old Alys Shee, a longtime student at the Academy of Ballet and Jazz here in Thornhill, has been making a splash at several international dance competitions lately and recently caught the eye of the artistic director of the prestigious American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in New York City.
“I’ve been down to New York a few times to take some classes with Nancy Bielski, who is one of the trainers at ABT,” explains Shee, over the phone from the airport, where she is waiting to board a flight to yet another dance competition, this time the Cape Town International Dance Competition in South Africa.
“Wes [Chapman, the artistic director] saw me dance and said, ‘It’s too bad you’re Canadian, but we’ll put in a request for a work visa for you.’”
The invitation was a surprise to Shee, who is modest and down-toearth offstage. “I’m pretty shocked that they took me because I’ve never thought of myself in that way,”she says. “But they’ve always been one of my favourite companies.”
In the fall, visa permitting, Shee will be moving to New York to become a member of ABT II, the school’s apprenticeship program.
It’s no surprise that Shee keeps sailing through open doors on her pointe shoes. After all, she’s been training with the best for several years.
Thornhill’s Academy of Ballet and Jazz has a long and impressive list of alumni who have succeeded on an international level. The school was founded in 1988 by Russian ballet dancer Nadia Tencer, under whom Shee has been training since the age of nine.
Shee has also received private coaching and instruction for the past four years from Canadian ballet legend Evelyn Hart, a household name among dance aficionados. Hart has been made a companion of the Order of Canada, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Manitoba. She’s also got a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame.
“Evelyn is an amazing dancer and an amazing coach,” says Shee. “Her technique was so clear and so artistic … and she’s always been able to articulate exactly what she wants.”
Hart has coached Shee to two silver medals at international dance competitions. Last year, Shee was awarded a silver medal at the Moscow International Dance Competition (the same medal that Karen Kain won at that competition in 1973; Mikhail Baryshnikov won gold in Moscow in 1969). In June, of this year, Shee won yet another silver medal at the U.S.A. International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi.
Shee loves the combination of private training and the regular classes she gets at the academy. “Nadia and Evelyn totally complement each other,” she says. “They want the same thing, but sometimes one can articulate it better and vice versa.”
As rewarding as private coaching with Hart is, Shee can sometimes find it lonely. “I like being in classes with other kids,” she says. “With Evelyn, it’s all private, but I have a lot of friends at the academy, and it’s nice to look around at how other people are dancing sometimes.”
Shee’s mom has driven her up to Thornhill from their house just south for her dance lessons every day since she began. All those hours in the car add up, but for Shee, “it’s totally worth it.”(Plus, she admits, it’s a good time to catch up on sleep.)
Shee first started dance classes at the age of three, and she took to it immediately. “The first ballet I saw was The Merry Widow, when I was around five,” she says. “But it didn’t paint how I felt about dancing because I already loved it.”
At 13, she got even more serious about dancing, leaving her Grade 8 class at the York School to study dance full-time and complete high school through online correspondence, a fact that she relates with glee.“I love it,”she says. “I don’t miss high school one bit.”
Up in Thornhill, Shee rarely leaves the dance studio, except to hit up the Ambrosia health food store across the street to buy candy with her classmates.
But Shee is quick to correct the image that comes to mind of a gaggle of lithe dance students nibbling on carob and pretending it’s candy. “It’s a health food store, but they sell real candy,” she assures me. “I don’t do ‘healthy’ candy.”
After the competition in South Africa, Shee goes on to the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, where her coach became the first ever Canadian to win a gold medal. The competition in Varna is the oldest and most respected in the world.
But for all the pressure she’s under, Shee is very down-to-earth in her attitude toward competitions. “For me, it’s just about getting up onstage and doing my best,” she says. “If someone beats me, it’s because they danced better than me.”
For example, she bears no grudge regarding her silver medal from the U.S.A. International Dance Competition in Mississippi in June. “The girl who was ahead of me deserved it,” she says. “She was stunning.”
Shee is enviably calm in the face of competition.“A lot of people like doing the competitions for the ‘bravo’ factor,” she says. “But for me, it’s just about getting the stage experience.”
Indeed, although she often travels to exotic places for these dance competitions, the “stage experience” overrides any local tourism.
“There’s no time to do anything except dance,” she says, of visiting locales such as Moscow where a less focused person might be tempted to duck out for a tour. “But it’s OK because I’m not there for sightseeing.”
At the same time, she doesn’t let herself get rattled by anyone else’s competitive spirit. “I really don’t see it as competition,” she says. “I know there are some girls who are kind of nasty, but for me it’s really just about getting out there and dancing.”
She’s even able to joke about onstage experiences that might have sent a less collected dancer weeping into the wings. “In Jackson, my partner’s dance costume got caught on my costume, and we had to rechoreograph the end of our pas de deux because we were stuck.”She laughs.“After the dance was over, they had to cut us out. I’ve seen that happen to girls, and they bawl their eyes out, but you just have to learn to work with those situations.”
But despite her preternatural poise and talent, in some ways Shee is a typical 16-year-old. In addition to the aforementioned aversion to “healthy” candy, Shee admits to plenty of time spent on the Internet. “Facebook probably takes up more time than anything else,” she says. “I mean, besides dancing.”