Ever Wong and Madame Szeto

Ever Wong and Madame Szeto’s relationship forms at Szeto Ballet Studio, where a visiting summer student becomes a pupil and finds a teacher who treats her as a dancer. Madame Szeto offers more than access to classes: she gives Ever a place to train, a chance to audition for Swan Lake, and a way to recover a sense of belonging to ballet. Her precise corrections and strikingly personal encouragement help shift Ever’s relationship with the form, making the studio a point of renewed artistic commitment.

Meeting at the Studio

Szeto Ballet Studio stands on the outskirts of Taipei, forty-five minutes from campus. Ever reaches its modest two-story building and enters a reception room with faded pink walls and well-loved Chinese wooden furniture. Beyond the desk, a mirror-lined studio holds a dozen girls her age practicing at a polished double barre while Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” plays. A red-haired instructor calls combinations in Mandarin and French; the familiar discipline of the room lifts Ever’s heart before she has even joined the class.

Madame Szeto approaches with the graceful carriage of a former dancer. Speaking English with an American accent, Ever explains that she is at Chien Tan and found the studio through a Coppélia album at a photography studio. She hesitates over calling herself a dancer, but asks whether there is room for her in the classes or summer ballet. Madame Szeto welcomes her, turning Ever’s tentative inquiry into an invitation to join.

The welcome quickly takes a concrete form. Madame Szeto gives Ever an amateur playbill for the studio’s August performance of Swan Lake at a community theater. When Ever asks about the roles, she learns that Odette, Odile, and Von Rothbart are among those available, although the parts will probably go to year-round students. Ever may still audition, provided she prepares a two-minute piece. Madame Szeto warns her that the other dancers have already been preparing for weeks, and offers a Sunday audition slot at eight in the morning.

Audition and Commitment

Ever accepts the slot despite the practical and emotional obstacles. She knocks a pointe shoe off the counter and hastily replaces it, then says she can prepare the required piece. The performance’s timing conflicts with the Tour Down South, a highlight of the Chien Tan summer, but Ever regards dance as equally important: she calls this opportunity her farewell to dancing and resolves to find a way out of the tour. The choice reveals how much the audition means to her before she knows whether she will win a role.

Madame Szeto records her as Wong Ai-Mei in the studio ledger and gives her a card for a dance shop selling clothes and shoes. Ever clutches the card as if it were a lifeline. Outside, she makes a cartwheel on the sidewalk, an impulsive physical expression of the exhilaration she has kept restrained while asking to be admitted. Madame Szeto has not promised her a part; she has made it possible for Ever to try.

Teaching and Recognition

Ever begins attending evening classes after dinner, racing from Chien Tan with her dance bag and pointe shoes over her shoulder. Madame Szeto teaches combinations by demonstrating them across the floor, then explaining in Mandarin and, for Ever, in English. Ever greedily follows the glide of her legs and the sweep of her arms while beginning to absorb ballet vocabulary. The teacher’s bilingual instruction helps Ever enter the studio’s practice without separating her from its local language and routines.

Madame Szeto is exacting about technique but makes a point of finding something encouraging to say to each girl. In Ever’s second class, she grips Ever’s biceps and corrects her arm engagement, showing her how to pull the arms apart to stabilize her balance and create lines of energy through the body. She then lifts Ever’s chin. The instruction is physical and specific: Madame Szeto does not merely praise Ever’s enthusiasm but gives her concrete adjustments through which to develop as a dancer.

Her encouragement nevertheless reaches beyond mechanics. She calls Ever her new bird and tells her that when she loves the dance, it shows, urging her to let that love show. For Ever, whose confidence in naming herself a dancer had faltered at their first meeting, the recognition matters. She can barely manage a thank-you in Mandarin, yet experiences the praise as profoundly warming and feels that Madame Szeto sees her.

What the Relationship Changes

Ever had not loved ballet as much as modern and jazz, but Madame Szeto’s teaching begins to change that. The correction of her arms, the attention to balance, and the teacher’s evident investment make ballet newly compelling. Ever imagines that winning Odette would mean working one-on-one with Madame Szeto, and responds by intensifying her effort: tightening her turns and pushing her leaps higher. Her ambition is tied not only to the part but to the possibility of deeper instruction.

The relationship therefore joins opportunity to discipline. Madame Szeto opens the door, but Ever must prepare a solo while more experienced students already have weeks of work behind them; she commits to the audition and trains with renewed force. The available account does not establish whether she wins a role. What it does show is a meaningful change before that outcome is known: in Madame Szeto’s studio, ballet becomes something Ever can love again, and the teacher’s regard helps her act on that feeling rather than treat dance as a closed chapter.