Allegra Kent taking ballet. After graduating, she joined the New York City Ballet in 1953 at the age of 15, and was promoted to principal in 1957. Many roles in George Balanchine's ballets were created for her, including "Seven Deadly Sins", "Ivesiana" and "Bugaku". She danced the role of Dewdrop in the 1958 Playhouse 90 telecast of Balanchine's version of "The Nutcracker". She performed in such ballets as "Serenade", "Agon" and "Dances at a Gathering". She retired in 1981, becoming a ballet teacher, and in 1997 published an autobiography, "Once a Dancer". In 2012, Kent published her first book for children, "Ballerina
Allegra Goodman Vita Nuova" was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2011 and was broadcast on Public Radio International's Selected Shorts in February 2012. Goodman and Karger live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Karger is a professor in computer science at MIT. They have four children, three boys and a girl. Allegra Goodman Allegra Goodman (born 1967) is an American author based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her most recent novel, "The Chalk Artist", was published in 2017. Goodman wrote and illustrated her first novel at the age of seven. Goodman was born in Brooklyn, NY, and raised in Hawaii. The daughter of Lenn