Allegra Kent speaks about her childhood encounter with creativity, with nature, and with dancing in this reading from her essay in Center publication The Sentient Archive: Bodies, Performance, and Memory, which gathers the work of artists and cultural practitioners in dance, architecture, science, and the visual arts with essays that cross boundaries within and between disciplines, and illustrate how the body serves as a repository for knowledge.
Kent is an artist whose candid recollections are infused with a delicate sensibility, one that led her to become, at 15, one of choreographer George Balanchine’s youngest dancers invited to join the New York City Ballet. She looks back to earlier times with love. Kent’s reading reveals the determination and grit that sustained her long career.
Allegra Kent studied ballet under Bronislava Nijinska and Carmelita Maracci before joining the New York City Ballet at age 15, becoming one of the youngest dancers invited into the company. She contributed the essay “My Discovery of Dance” to Center publication The Sentient Archive: Bodies, Performance, and Memory, a collection of writings that illustrate how the body serves as a repository for knowledge.