The Turning: Room of Mirrors · iHeartPodcasts and Rococo Punch

S2: Ep 4 - The Muses

February 7, 2023·47 min·4 clips

Jim Steichen reveals Holly Howard had her fourth abortion by Balanchine, hinting at coercion in their relationship.

The room is built from fragments. A photograph of Allegra bowing with Balanchine sits near an image from Serenade in Japan, and the episode gives those pictures room to sit with the listener. Then the pool photographs shift the whole mood. At first, the blue-black images look almost like Rorschach tests. Then arms and legs appear, working through the water. Reflection splits her body in two. The narration stays with that image because it says what the interview keeps circling: Allegra can be there and still keep something back. She calls the movement contrary to gravity, and the phrase starts to sound less like technique than temperament. The questions are soft but precise. When asked for a favorite ballet, Allegra refuses to make the choice, comparing it to picking a favorite child or flower. Her answer wanders, but not emptily. She moves around beauty by alphabet, category, and avoidance. The episode respects that strangeness. It does not flatten her into a neat explanation, even when it admits how much remains unanswered. Childhood comes in through Santa Monica and religion. Allegra describes two Jewish parents, an early divorce, and a California world where people seemed to change faiths all the time. Her mother chose Christian Science. The belief that pain and pleasure were not real helps explain how a young dancer could push past the body's warnings. Allegra took it seriously. When dancing hurt, she told herself the pain was not real and kept going, until devotion and denial started to look almost the same.

As heard by us

A close look at ballet, pain, and the habit of holding feeling back.

This episode stays close to Allegra as she moves through ballet, private discipline, and a habit of keeping pain and feeling at arm's length. The best moments are concrete: a bouquet at the curtain, a pool that turns into a mirror, a body working against gravity, a childhood…

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Why you'd press play

For an interview with a ballerina that feels intimate, reflective, and a little hard to pin down.

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