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 comfortable and would have a better chance at a good life if she lived with her father. "I have sent you my child because I love her too well to keep her," she wrote to Byron. Byron requested that her name be changed from Alba, which also related to "Albé," Clairmont's nickname for Byron, to Allegra, an Italian name meaning "cheerful, brisk" and relating to the musical term "allegro." During the journey to turn the child over to Byron, Clairmont wrote in her journal that she had bathed her daughter in Dover, but then crossed the passage out, as if