Once a Dancer...: An Autobiography

Title: Once a Dancer...: An Autobiography
Author: Allegra Kent
I: 1709695
ISBN: 9780312150518
Publisher: St Martins Pr
Published: 1997
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Edition: First Edition
Number of Pages: 340
Section: Biography & Autobiography | Entertainment & Performing Arts
Condition Note: Moderate edge wear. Binding good. May have marking in text. We sometimes source from libraries. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description: One of the greatest of George Balanchine's ballerinas, Allegra Kent joined the New York City Ballet at the age of fifteen and only two years later inspired Balanchine's "The Unanswered Question" (from Ivesiana). Beautiful, sensuous, mysterious, she quickly became an essential Balanchine dancer. He created central roles for her in 'Episodes', 'Bugaku', 'The Seven Deadly Sins, Stars and Stripes', and the 'Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet', as well as reviving 'La Sonnambula' for her. An immense favorite of audiences here and abroad, she had a particularly spectacular success on the company's famous Russian tour in 1962. But the story of her personal life is at least as dramatic as the story of her rise to fame. Raised haphazardly by a mostly absent father and an all-too-present mother, she married the first man she ever dated, the celebrated (and complicated) photographer Bert Stern. And she suspended her career three times to have children, no matter what the cost to her work. Allegra Kent is today a triumphant survivor of a difficult, troubled, yet deeply gratifying life, and her writing reflects the intelligence, grace, and artistry that characterized her dancing. Her account of a bizarre childhood, a magnificent if unusual dance career, a charged, complicated, domestic life, and a never-ending struggle with emotional, physical, and financial pressures is fascinating as are her portraits of the other great dance figures who punctuated her life, from Balanchine to Baryshnikov.