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 Goodman father, Lenn E. Goodman, is a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt. Allegra Goodman graduated from Punahou School in 1985. She then went on to Harvard University, where she earned an A.B. degree and met her husband, David Karger. Both were regulars at Harvard Hillel, and prayed in Harvard Hillel Orthodox Minyan. They then went on to do graduate work at Stanford University, where Goodman earned a Ph.D. degree in English literature, in 1996. Goodman's younger sister, Paula Fraenkel, is an oncologist. Fraenkel's experience in research labs is one of the inspirations for Goodman's 2006 novel "Intuition". Her short story "La