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 | Once A Dancer . . by Allegra Kent, Paperback | Indigo Chapters