Always a dancer… - ballerina Allegra Kent - Interview

Interview, March, 1997 by Robert Gottlieb

AK: Yes, just seventeen. I think that I got very wrapped up in dancing and that was visible to him. Whether I was in class or in performance, I just threw myself into it.

RG: He always loved that, of course.

AK: It was energy, it was love. A little wildness, a little hyperactivity. Maybe quite wrong, too. [laughs]

RS: But that never bothered him.

AK: It didn't bother him.

RG: Because he always found a use for whatever quality Interested him. The question is, what was your quality? Do you have a hunch or a clue? He obviously wasn't ever going to express such a thing verbally.

AK: Oh, no. No.

RG: But I think there are clues In the ballets.

AK: We all have to be detectives in life.

RG: Particularly with Balanchine! There are clues in the ballets that he made on you, or restored for you.

AK: Even with paintings you have to be a detective.

RG: You're avoiding this question.

AK: [amusedly] O.K.

RG: I mean, In the first ballet that he made on you, "The Unanswered Question" [from Ivesiana] in 1954, you're held aloft throughout your entire time onstage, while a man who Is yearning for you tries to reach you, but never succeeds.

AK: Lots of symbolism.

RG: So you're unattainable. You're an erotic object that is unattainable. Or a romantic object that Is unattainable.

AK: Well, "neurotic" is a little -

RS: Not neurotic - erotic.

AK: Oh, erotic.

RG: You're an erotic object that is unattainable.

AK: I agree.

RG: Now let's look at the famous ballet he revived for you, La Sonnambula - The Sleepwalker - which may be the most famous of all your roles. The same pattern -

AK: The same pattern, and the same color costume: white. Hair down.

RG: Hair down, but feet never really down on the floor.

AK: There are almost no feet. It's just bourrees - up on the toes. It's sort of a magical movement.

RG: So here is another unattainable woman, with whom a young poet falls In love, and [he] Is killed for It. And she is completely unaware of him. In fact, she steps over him -

AK' But she is aware of him.

RG: Aware of him, but not responsive to him until she carries his dead body off the stage, still up on her toes. And then there's Bugaku, which is probably the most erotic ballet Balanchine ever created - it's in essence a mating dance, wouldn't you say?

AK' I would say it is.

RG: But even so, it's curiously remote. It's an expression of eroticism but It's formal. You're available but you're not available.

AK: It represents a kind of Japanese, stylized ritual.

RG: So eight yearn after "The Unanswered Question," when you're already twenty-five -

AK: Yes, yes, it's a continuation. Of course.

RG: And then the other most famous thing he did for you was The Seven Deadly Sins. On the one hand, you're the personification of every known sin, and on the other hand, you're Innocent and untouched, while Lotte Lenya, your doppelganger, is the one who expresses all the viciousness.

AK: She does all the expressing.

RG: Somehow you looked innocent, untouched, while embodying lust, gluttony, et al.

AK: Yes, definitely, definitely innocent.