Once a Dancer...: An Autobiography Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Once a Dancer...: An Autobiography Book

This unusual, fascinating, and at times almost surreal autobiography chronicles the life of Allegra Kent, one of the most famous--and notorious--of Balanchine's prima ballerinas. The most blatantly erotic of Balanchine ballets were written for her pliant and chilly dance method. This book has it all: art, dance, infidelity, sexual intrigue, histrionics, eccentric outbursts, nose jobs, philosophy, and Krishnamurti. Entirely entertaining and intriguing for both dance enthusiasts and those who don't know a plié from a jeté.Read More

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  • Book Description

    Autobiography of one of Balanchine's finest ballerinas

     

    "What a witty, evocative writer Ms. Kent is!"--New York Times

     

    "A daffy and unexpectedly poignant autobiography. . . . [Kent] repossesses as a writer the unpredictable charm of her dancing. She is zanily elegant . . . frequently stranded, broke, desperate, abused, or abandoned, yet well served by a fey kind of gumption."--Kirkus Reviews

     

    "In [Balanchine's] garden of unearthly delights, Allegra Kent as the most enchanting bloom of all. . . . Through Kent's own wise and courageous recollections . . . we see her unique spirit and almost see again her glorious dancing."--Vanity Fair

     

    "[Kent's] writing is as varied, lucid, and troubling as her dancing. . . . To ask whether she knows how much she has inadvertently told us is merely to frame one more time the terms of her peculiar mystery."--Wall Street Journal

     

    "As distinctly riveting as she ever was on stage."--Dance Magazine

     

    "Kent, one feels, has never known quite where or who she is. . . . Born Iris Cohen in 1937, she had an early life that was the crazy kind you might find in the fiction of Flannery O'Connor. . . . [She writes,] '[Mr. B.] saw in me the psychological raw materials that could be molded and remolded into images of sensuality--unrealized and restrained, but there, just under the surface. The star inside the sapphire.' This is not only a convincing analysis of a difficult concept, it is beautiful writing."--Washington Post

     

  • Product Description

    One of George Balanchine's greatest ballerinas, who was a principal dancer for more than twenty years with the New York City Ballet, talks about her childhood, dance career, marriage, and constant quest for emotional and physical stability.

  • 0312150512
  • 9780312150518
  • Allegra Kent
  • 1 January 1997
  • St. Martin's Press
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 340
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