Toronto's Alys Shee, just 16, is headed to a major international ballet competition in Varna, Bulgaria, with partner Aaron Smyth.

KEITH BEATY/TORONTO STAR

Success in life, it’s often said, is one-tenth talent and nine-tenths sweat. On a muggy afternoon last week in a National Ballet studio on Queens Quay West there’s a lot of talent on display and plenty of sweat.

Alys Shee, just 16 and a recent junior-level silver medallist at the prestigious USA International Ballet Competition, is running through the repertoire she’ll perform later this month at the grandaddy of all such events in Varna, Bulgaria.

It’s a gruelling rehearsal — three classical and two contemporary pas de deux, including lots of bravura solos — but neither Shee nor her 19-year-old Australian partner, Aaron Smyth, seem fazed. In fact, they look as if they could dance forever.

Watching intently as Shee whips off an amazingly poised series of fast turns is her coach, former Royal Winnipeg Ballet prima Evelyn Hart. She knows the guts required to triumph in an elite-level international ballet competition. Hart took the senior Varna gold medal in 1980, a career breakthrough that catapulted her to international stardom, and will be returning there with Shee for the first time since that headline-making victory.

“I loathe to make predictions,” says Hart. “I can only say that Alys has all the ingredients to become a ballerina in the true sense of the word.”

Hart’s hallmark was a profound artistry in which technique and expression became indivisible. This is what she’s trying to pass on to Shee and by all appearances it’s working.

Though her body is not yet fully grown, lithe, long-legged Shee already has technique to spare, but it’s the subtlety of her musical phrasing, radiant personality and confident presentation that impress.

“You need so much more than technique,” the personable, down-to-earth young woman explains. “You have to have a certain feeling.”

There was no ballet background in Shee’s family. It was an aunt who thought of putting her in a children’s dance class. From there, at age 9, she transferred to Nadia Veselova Tencer’s School of Canadian Ballet Theatre in Thornhill, gradually moving from weekly classes to an intense daily schedule.

The Shees live in a modest East York home. Shee’s father, Chui Shee, is a TTC subway driver. He and his wife, Melanie, have had to make sacrifices to allow their daughter to pursue her dream.

Melanie Shee, whom Tencer describes as “incredibly supportive,” was initially cautious about her daughter’s career ambitions, concerned that her academically gifted child should have options. Rather than send her away to an institution such as the National Ballet School or Hart’s alma mater, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, Melanie Shee kept her daughter at home and enrolled her in Toronto’s respected co-educational York School.

As she observed her progress and listened to Tencer and Hart’s advice, Melanie Shee felt comfortable letting her daughter concentrate on ballet while continuing her academics through online instruction. “Mum is big on my getting my high school diploma,” says Shee, ungrudgingly.

Tencer trained at the legendary Kirov school in St. Petersburg, Russia. She’s also artistic director of “Stars of the 21st Century,” the international ballet gala she founded with her husband, Solomon Tencer, in 1995. Working with many of the world’s finest artists has allowed Tencer to fine-tune her own training methods — based on the respected Russian Vaganova technique — to give students what they’ll need to succeed in today’s tough professional environment.

“Alys is hungry to be a dancer,” says Tencer. “She was born with natural grace. She has unlimited potential.”

As Shee’s technique developed, aided by intensive studies at leading American ballet summer schools, she also began to rack up competition wins, most notably last year when, still 14, Shee won a silver medal at the Moscow International Ballet Competition, beating out a Kirov-trained girl in the process.

Only her mother could afford to accompany Shee to Moscow last year, offering practical and emotional support but not a professional eye. Shee just got on with it anyway, showing up early at the Bolshoi theatre to rehearse and being among the last to leave.

Some young dancers become addicted to competitions. They can play a beneficial role but are no guarantee of ultimate career success.

Shee understands this but has a very practical reason for testing herself once again, this time in Varna.

Both she and Smyth, whom she met this spring in New York where he’d been training at the American Ballet Theatre school, have been offered contracts by that illustrious company’s junior troupe, ABT II. To get the necessary visas they have to prove exceptional merit. Winning medals in Varna could be a deciding factor.

But as they launch into another variation during their marathon rehearsal, all you see is the pure joy of dance.