Morning Becomes Allegra

SPOTLIGHT

¶ eorge Balanchine, the great Russian-born choreographer and a founder of the New York City Ballet, once said, "The ballet is ... »? a garden of beautiful flowers." In his garden of unearthly delights, Allegra Kent was the ■ most enchanting bloom of all. As renowned ■ for her perfect classical line as for her great ^_beauty and amazing flexibility, she was vulnerable, mysterious, and delicately sensual all at once.

Balanchine had the uncanny ability to reveal through his choreography the qualities that made his various dancer-muses unique. Much as he examined the fiery imperiousness of Maria Tallchief and the lush lyricism of Suzanne Farrell, he celebrated Kent's poignant ethereality. He cast her in The Seven Deadly Sins (1958) as the naive, malleable Anna; in the elegant fantasy on a Japanese wedding ceremony, Bugaku (1963), as the tender, complicit bride, twisted into erotic contortions by her groom; and as the heartbreaking and poetic sleepwalker in La Sonnambula (1943, revived by Balanchine for Kent in 1960).

Now, with the imminent publication of Kent's autobiography, Once a Dancer ... , those not fortunate enough to have seen her dance during her 30-year career with the New York City Ballet can glimpse what it is that made her a legend.

Allegra Kent arrived in New York in 1951 at the age of 14 after an itinerant, unconventional childhood. She came to study Lt at the School of American Ballet, where she immedi-

ately caught Balanchine's attention. Three years later she was catapulted to fame in the first role he created for her: the girl in Ivesiana (1954) who is eerily carried aloft by four men. In that ballet her feet literally never touched the ground, and Kent believes Balanchine intended her to portray a "spiritual object sought by a man who could never possess her."

At age 21 she married the first man she ever dated: the photographer Bert Stern, 8 years her senior. As her rise to stardom gave way to self-doubts and stage fright, her storybook marriage became a nightmare. Stern's daily visits to an infamous amphetamine guru, "Dr. Feelgood," tumbled their family from the pinnacle of success to the desperation of near poverty in the early 1970s. Torn between the desire to care for her three children and the demands of her career, Kent became more a guest artist than a constant presence on the stage, but Balanchine, grateful for even a rare performance, remarked with candor, "Allegra is the exception to my rules" (one of which was that dancers should dance every day). Through it all, though, the radiance and beauty that set her apart remained undiminished. Even now, Kent, who is retired and happily remarried to businessman Bob Gurney, retains the distinctive look of a ballerina and takes a daily ballet class. Several generations of dancers her junior cannot help staring at what is so obviously a genius in their midst.

Ballet is unforgiving once a dancer leaves the stage. Video never quite captures the sheer visceral excitement of movement; all we are really left with is our memories of past performances. Through Kent's own wise and courageous recollections, however, we see her unique spirit, and almost see again her glorious dancing.

HEATHER WATTS