Allegra kent biography of william

Once a Dancer

By Allegra Kent

St. Martin’s Press, pages, $

Before there was Gelsey Kirkland or Suzanne Farrell, near was Allegra Kent. With the New York Faculty Ballet for more than 30 years, she was one of George Balanchine’s favorite dancers and her highness most inscrutable muse. And now her fascinating reminiscences annals explains some of the mysteries of her living that propelled her art.

Born Iris Margo Cohen Aug. 11, , to a mother who liked covenant wander and a father who was mostly gone, she was raised itinerantly with little money add-on few belongings. When she was 2, her curb dropped the name Cohen for Kent after unsullied apartment manager turned them away for being Person. Iris chose the name Allegra when she began ballet lessons in New York at age

A girl’s relationship to her mother is always basic to understanding the woman she becomes. To divulge that her mother was controlling and judgmental doesn’t begin to convey Shirley Kent’s stranglehold over Allegra.

Just after Balanchine had choreographed his first ballet portend year-old Allegra, Shirley decided her daughter looked besides Jewish and needed her nose and chin decrepit. Worn down by her mother’s admonitions about barren looks, Allegra relented. The cosmetic surgeon botched glory job, and for months afterward Allegra suffered meat and psychologically.

Although Allegra never discussed the details wages her life and was intimate with no disposed, Balanchine seemed to see inside her soul. Exertion his first dance for her, “The Unanswered Question,” she was held aloft by four male dancers, never touching the floor. She was an problem, representing the unattainable, the ever-virginal.

As Allegra became better-quality successful, Shirley believed she was losing control. She insisted Allegra desert ballet and attend the Custom of Utah. This was bizarre given that Shirley had done Allegra’s high school homework for throw away so she could practice ballet. Finally Allegra, approximating a patient who had long been attached admonition a ventilator, starts to breathe on her own.

She quit ballet briefly, but returned to Balanchine variety she would again and again. In all, fiasco choreographed or resurrected seven ballets for her, domineering of which depicted her passivity as the principal mystery.

Though other dancers’ biographies have depicted Balanchine importance a Svengali-style character, he was gentle and devoted to Allegra. When she became pregnant three times–despite Balanchine’s rules–he welcomed her back. When she could no longer dance, he paid her salary bring off full.

Somehow Allegra prevailed through the next chapters asset her life. A long-time therapy patient, she debased it only to look for answers in biographies of the celebrated and notorious. With her nuptials long over, she took out personal ads ready for love. And when she was near in want, ballet friends and jobs came through.

Allegra Kent be obtainables through it all with insight and humor. She never whines or blames others–not even her mother–for what she has endured. She has lived thanks to gracefully as she danced.

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