Allegra Kent [own] parents. She borrowed a neighbor's working papers and took a job at twelve. By fourteen, she was teaching ballroom dancing at night in someone's private home, mostly to Japanese men". Born in Santa Monica, Kent studied with Bronislava Nijinska and Carmelita Maracci before joining the School of American Ballet. She discovered music and dance at the age of 7 and enjoyed both, but she was 11 before she took her first ballet lesson. She had completely flat feet as a little girl and consulted a doctor, who prescribed wedges in her shoes to give her arches. She then began
Allegra Byron of society ... This step will procure to you an innumerable addition of enemies & of blame." In March 1822, she created a plan to kidnap her daughter from the convent and asked Shelley to forge a letter of permission from Byron. Shelley refused. Byron had arranged for Allegra to be educated in the convent precisely because he, unlike his former lover Clairmont, thought favourably of the manners and attitudes of Italian women who had received convent educations. He disapproved of what he called Clairmont's "loose morals" and "Bedlam behavior" and didn't want her to influence Allegra. He also believed