ZIPPORA KARZ
Zippora Karz was once a daughter, escaping the fires of her childhood, finding refuge in a ballet studio.
She was once a performer, turning that refuge into her destiny, dancing in the blazing flame of stardom for the New York City Ballet.
And in the midst of it all, she was once a woman learning to live inside a body she could no longer fully trust—one that developed Type 1 diabetes, one that threatened to extinguish the very fire that had given her purpose.
Against all odds, she seized her destiny. She became the dancer she had always fought to become.
But Zippora is more than what she survives.
Because beneath the daughter, the dancer, the diabetic, and the survivor, there is a soul trying to understand who she is when all of those identities are stripped away.
And, perhaps, in understanding her soul, maybe you can understand yours, too.
WELCOME TO EGO DEATH.
Four Gnossienes, photo by Paul Kolnik
First, the shoes. Left ribbon over right. Around the ankle. Again.
Left ribbon over right. Around the ankle. Again.
Tight. Secure. Perfect, she must have thought. Stable.
No one in that class could have detected anything but precision, but grace.
No one could have discerned the electrical pulse that incessantly flowed throughout Zippora’s body as a child. This charge, that made her feel like a “headbanger,” a “burden,” or a “punishment,” was so faithfully suppressed by those lacings.
First position. Heels together. Chin Up. Arms out.
She watches this pulse — harnessed, disciplined — flow out of her fingertips and grow roots in the ground.
Roots. Family. Would her mother be proud of her arms or her pointed toes? Do they look like hers when she danced at Juilliard? Or her grandmother’s when she danced in Vaudeville?
Or do they look like her teacher Sheila’s? Or her sister Romy’s?
This is for the women that came before.
The women that came after.
Plié. Straighten. Again.
Sheila’s instruction rings in her ears. Warm, embracing.
Sheila saw something in Zippora that she could have never seen for herself. She wouldn’t even have applied for the School of American Ballet without her, let alone chosen to go.
What would it be like to be taught by someone else? To dance in the concrete jungle, not the city of angels? Could she handle moving across the country by herself? At the age of fifteen?
There is always correction. Point your foot, engage your core.
Something inside of her will always believe that she needs correction.
Even Dave, her mother’s boyfriend, would agree. Why did she have to sleep in on that Sunday morning? Why did he have to choke her? Hit her?
That note. That inscription in the book he gave her. It must have said it all, right?
"Guys like me only dream of doing in life what you’re doing. I’m so proud of you. Love, Dave.”
Was that support?
Focus.
Left foot. Right foot. Close.
Tendu. Straighten.
Left foot. Right foot. Close.
Do it again.
Do it right this time.
Because maybe, just maybe, if she could perfect these steps, she wouldn’t be thought a “punishment.”
Do it again. Do it right this time.
Because maybe, just maybe, if she could perfect these steps, her feet would be strong enough to run away from it all.
Serenade, photo by Paul Kolnik
Running, among many other things, was something Zippora and I had in common. I had done exactly that to get to our interview.
“I’m so sorry, agh, I’m never late. Never.”
It was particularly difficult for me to recover from, as it was known, to both of us, that she was about a three-minute drive from my dad’s house in Malibu, California.
Zippora laughed. She knew me. She had known me since I was born, as she’s my mom’s best friend.
I knew her, too, but I admittedly felt a bit starstruck after reading her memoir, The Sugarless Plum. I was so inspired by her. And so shocked I hadn’t known all of her story beforehand.
What I realized, however, in that moment of being late, was that we both possessed a burning, perfectionistic desire to be good, disciplined, responsible. And for both of us, it may have been fostered by…unique upbringings.
“After the incident with Dave, and then, when I became a ballerina [in New York], I wasn’t vocal anymore,” she expressed. “I previously had an out-of-control energy that I didn't feel like I could stop. I wanted to be good, but I didn't have control over it. But I found a voice through movement…I was finding my life. I found a place to put all of that angst and all of that energy.”
And once she started at the School of American Ballet, “it gave [the energy] a space to become something.”
Ballet, at home, was an escape…and ballet, as a career, became a purpose.
Her energy was accepted, welcomed, and served as an emotional expression of her soul.
She felt a lot, all the time. Not just this “energy,” but an overwhelming compassion, even toward those that hurt her.
Even towards what she was leaving behind.
As tears filled her eyes, Zippora shared, “ I just remember, when I heard [Dave] was sick, and then I heard he died. I was only sixteen by then. He was all alone. I just felt so bad that he never figured it out. He never figured himself out, his own temperament - because he had a really good heart that we all grew to care about. He just couldn’t control his rage.”
Maybe this compassion, this ability to see beyond the pain he had inflicted on her, served a greater purpose. Maybe this was when she chose to commit to figuring herself out.
Because within the first year of training at the school, she began to truly realize how serious this path could be for her. If she put enough discipline into her training, which, by the way, was under the revered and legendary George Balanchine, she could join the New York City Ballet (NYCB). Then, she could tour with them. And eventually, she could become a soloist. Maybe.
Well, by the age of eighteen, in 1984, within three years of her training, she was made a full member of the corps de ballet, or “the body of the ballet,” the company.
Not only that, but her teachers, the most prominent being Peter Martins, the ballet-in-chief post Balanchine’s death, saw her potential as well. He gave her the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker during only her second year at the company.
It wasn’t long until she would be asked to dance another leading role in Jerome Robbin’s epic ballet, The Goldberg Variations. But when they recast her role, at the age of twenty, she was already worried about being a has-been.
Her body wasn’t as quick to warm up as the other dancers. It required more attention, more time. She was exhausted, too. And all of these things were affecting her dancing. But it couldn’t have been more than the adjustment to the rigor of the training, right?
Snowflake in Balanchine’s Nutcracker, photo by Steven Caras
While I sunk into the corners of her couch, it felt as if Zippora’s words of warning and fear were looming over me. I listened with anticipation.
“I wasn’t telling anybody because he was never going to put me on stage. If my director knew what I was going through, he wasn’t ever gonna cast me. And I was so desperate to prove that I was the same person.
I fell so in love with dance, and I couldn’t let something come along that was going to threaten it because I didn’t have a life without it.”
Extreme thirst. Dizziness. Exhaustion. Unusual hunger. Weight loss. Sores under her arms that wouldn’t heal. Frequent urination. An unfamiliar body. An unreliable body.
Peter Martins had created a leading role featuring her in one of his ballets, Le Petit Reins. She was now entrusted with a major repertoire by the leading choreographers of the NYCB, and as she waited in the wings to go on, she was on the verge of collapse.
She kept blaming it on the fact that she was pushing her body to its physical limits. Eight shows a week. Rehearsing every hour of the day. But her struggles showed as she fell on and off pointe during the performances.
Whether it was the words of one of her instructors who encouraged her to seek medical assistance, the concern of her younger sister, Romy, who just joined the company alongside her, or the unhealing sores on her arms, she decided to go see a doctor.
“I had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes…because of my age and because my blood sugar levels were so high, (but nowhere near as high as would be expected with uncontrolled Type 1 diabetes)” (The Sugarless Plum, 198).
However, the doctors were wrong. So wrong that the oral medication that they prescribed her, as opposed to insulin, and the dietary regimen she was on, were slowly killing her.
Luckily, she was in what is called the Honeymoon Phase of Type 1, where enormous amounts of exercise and diet seemingly controlled her blood sugar levels. Soon, however, she would crash and burn.
“They actually call the ’80’s the dark ages of diabetes,” she revealed. Even though she was eventually diagnosed correctly as a Type 1 diabetic and prescribed insulin, she still believed she could beat diabetes with her discipline and no one would know.
God forbid she couldn’t dance anymore. Who would she be? What was home?
“Throughout the winter season and through the spring, I was learning how to dance all day while secretly taking my insulin shots” (241).
1987, COPENHAGEN - NYCB EUROPEAN TOUR - 23 YEARS OLD
Opening night. Stage makeup on, pointe shoes laced, body warmed. Blood sugar levels: 120.
“Ten minutes please.”
“I thought about Peter Martins watching. I thought about the Queen of Denmark being in the audience.”
Deep breaths. Shove down the adrenaline.
Zippora didn’t feel that calm that she normally felt before a performance. She felt panic. Did she take the right amount of insulin?
“I tried to calm down by telling myself that I could do it, and that everything would be fine.”
First step done, not bad.
Second step…second step? Barely landed. She nearly fell off pointe.
Again, a close call.
Again, she nearly fell over.
“My feet went cold. Don’t let that stop you, I told myself. Try harder, point harder.
It’s not working, I screamed silently. I can’t let go.”
Intermission. She ran up to the bathroom, crying, avoiding Peter.
“I grabbed my meter…my blood sugar level was 150…I hated my body for ruining my life. I grabbed a syringe, hid it in my sweatshirt and headed to the bathroom, where I jabbed the insulin into my belly.”
“Five minutes.”
“I was terrified. I worried that I’d taken too much. Before any more thoughts could race through my mind, everything went blank.”
She checked the meter. Blood sugar at twenty.
Twenty.
“I had never taken glucose tablets before. How many tablets would I need? I downed as many as I could.”
“Places”
“I have to find Romy…where is Romy?”
When she found her, she went pale.
“Romy took charge, pulled me into the changing area and demanded that I take off my costume so that she could put it on and dance my part for me.
‘Okay,’ Romy said, trembling, ‘tell me what to do.’
For a moment, we just stared at each other.”
“Zippora”
“Give me back my costume” (248-254).
Backstage, Zippora and Romy
“Having any kind of serious illness is always an isolating experience, and all the more so when everyone around is so physically strong. For that reason alone, it was particularly meaningful for me to know that I could confide in Romy” (244).
I don’t think my jaw left the floor when Zippora admitted to finally taking her health seriously…TWO OR THREE DOCTORS AND THREE OR FOUR YEARS LATER.
“Nobody knew what they were doing, but they were acting like they did, and they were taking me down these rabbit holes, and I was blindly trusting them. But I was in denial enough to do that.
My doctor at the time didn't understand the athleticism of ballet. Exercise increases the effectiveness of insulin. I was prescribed doses that were way too much and way too dangerous for me. Maybe I didn't explain how much I was dancing?”
“But even after that tour,” I asked, “and when you struggled through your next leading role in Four Gnossiennes, still unable to find the right help, why didn’t you confide in your mom? I understand not telling your teachers. But, people close to you? Why did you have to experience this alone?”
“Because of my dynamic with my Mom, because I still had to work out that anger at her for not protecting me from Dave, I felt a little bit like her parent,” she shared. “I didn’t feel vulnerable to her….which is why, you know, I became vulnerable to the doctor.”
Dr. G was recommended to Zippora by a friend. He had a more holistic approach to diabetes treatment, which enticed her.
And for the first time, she felt that she was in better hands. He was more than a doctor, but a friend. He invited her over for dinners, teaching her how to cook healthy meals. He listened to her emotional struggles, as she was twenty-seven, and longed to experience love, and life outside of ballet.
But as it would turn out, he took advantage of her vulnerability.
“I was drowning. I was trying to hold onto my career.
Every doctor I go to is fucking me up. It’s either too much insulin or too little insulin, and then this doctor is fucking me, literally.
I had so little regard for my own value. What’s so crazy is that you can be this ballerina up on stage and have such a beautiful life - but think so little about yourself unless you’re doing that.
How do we fill those holes of lack? So that we don’t end up in situations where people can feed on us and take advantage of us?”
She was so much goddamn bigger than him, though. She was so much bigger than what he had done to her, and how she felt about herself.
Even if she couldn’t see it, her company did.
Because finally, at the age of twenty-seven, she became a soloist with the New York City Ballet.
“So that was it. Six years after my diagnosis, in my ninth year in the company, I had been promoted. I walked out of the theater reflecting on my long journey. I thought about how I’d tried to hide what I was going through, how much I’d wanted to be able to to function in this world where, although we were delicate, we were also strong, resistant, and tough. Had I really become what I was so determined to be? As a soloist, I’d consistently be given roles in which I could express myself and grow. Could I now relax, knowing that I would be nurtured and fulfilled?” (314)
Yes, she could relax. Her years as a soloist were everything she dreamed of, everything she worked towards. Everything she had been training her body to handle, training her soul to express.
Throughout the years, as knowledge spread about diabetes, she would eventually find doctors that aided her and supported her in the way her mind, body, and soul demanded.
“Even those previous doctors thought they were helping,” she sighed. But she would one day find doctors that did help.
And just like the right support found her, so did love.
“My whole life was about finding love, and dance was the epitome of heart and romanticism. I danced for love. I danced because of all those feelings.”
It was what she, just like every human, craved. It was what she deserved.
Once she took her bow as a soloist, leaving the stage with every blood, sweat, and tear, she would soon give her all to a relationship. One that she finally felt right about.
But just like each dance is a daring risk, so is love. And while that love brought her back to her home base, Los Angeles, it did not bring her stability or peace. It broke her heart.
Just as fate would have it, home needed her anyway. She was then able to spend the last few months with her mother, who was battling cancer. And spend time with her cat, who also fell ill. This was a time of patience, of loss, of heartbreak, and eventually, grief.
Life, with its cruel dominoes, knocked her down. She hit rock bottom.
“I didn’t feel like I wanted to kill myself, but I felt like I was listening to a tape in my head, you must self-destruct. I didn’t feel like I had what it took to survive that. I felt like I had no tools to survive this kind of stuff. So it was really hard.
I remember I was teaching in Arizona, and there was this place called Camelback Mountain….I remember just sitting in front of the mountain and praying. Please show me something I don’t know. Please teach me something I don’t understand about life, about myself - this can’t be the reality.”
What she found, over time, though, was a quiet hope.
“It’s almost just self-acceptance and the right to be here. I wouldn’t even say that it was a trust that things were going to work out, but it was an acceptance of the pain that life was bringing me.
It was a prayer I had for a long time…and I found, within me, somehow, just the spark of why we exist.”
And from there, is where teaching came in.
“All of a sudden, I’m teaching and I’m sharing this expertise that I have from all of the years that I’ve danced. And I start finding that - I’m back in the place of what I fell in love with about dance.”
I often imagine what goes through Zippora’s head now, at the age of sixty-one, when she’s in the studio. Vastly different thoughts than at age fifteen, I safely assume.
Now, when she looks in the studio mirror, she’s Sheila. She looks to the young girls in her class, beaming with pride.
“They can feel the place of love that I’m sharing from. And as a teacher, I’m not imposing on them the need that I have to teach. I don’t teach from a place of need for identity.
Nothing will ever be like the moment of being on stage and being the vessel. Nothing will ever be that high I had experienced, you know, creation.
But as a teacher, it’s giving back. It’s being the mentor. It’s being the mother, it’s being the creator, it’s giving it to them. And then getting to see your students experience all of that. I’m so grateful for everything that I went through because of who I’ve become.”
A beeping cut through the room, which brought me up and out of that couch.
“Ah, my sugars. I need to eat a date.”
She kindly offered me something to eat, too. It felt so familial, so sisterly.
At this moment, I wondered if she and Romy shared frequent meals together. After all, Romy lives only a few houses down from Zippora.
Once she returns, date still in mouth, she sits at the edge of the couch, beaming with excitement. (Another gesture of comfort that made me feel like Romy).
“Listen to this. I was just in Orlando, where there was a performance, and there’s an organization called Touched by Type 1 - we brought the kids to the ballet and I did a little talk for them.”
This is an organization that Zippora works with regularly, and speaking about her journey, especially after publishing her memoir, has also become her path.
“A parent from the talk recently wrote to me: I come from a home where as a child, my talent was treated as a novelty and a nuisance. I was told to know my place, to stop believing the fantasy that I would ever actually achieve anything because people like us, an immigrant family from Cuba, we had to be sensible in order to survive…When my daughters were born, I prayed for the wisdom and the strength to never hold my children back no matter how uncomfortable it might make me. And to help them face the challenges that come when chasing big dreams, when they were diagnosed. When they were, everything shifted. This time I began to pray that we would find ways to support them through this condition so that they would never experience the limitations that come with it as a deterrent to their dreams. Thank you for sharing your story of thriving in spite of type one diabetes, but also for modeling what it looks like to turn pain into purpose. And for helping others to do the same.”
We both swelled with emotion - but for different reasons.
For me, in knowing her story, they are tears of pride, but also tears of wishing that she had that encouragement when she was younger. Maybe she wouldn’t have felt so alone in her struggle.
For her, it’s the act of giving back. She never thought that what she went through could have meaning for someone else. It means so much to her to now be there for others, after learning to be there for herself.
As people resonate with and are touched by her story, they see her for more than her accolades or tribulations. They see the strong woman she is, the beauty and the strength that is the electrifying pulse of her soul.
This is something that Zippora is continuously working to see for herself.
“That's what every artist is faced with,” she shares. “You are only as good as your last job. It's imperative that we don't over-identify, that we learn to love our talent to be able to do it, and to express it and experience it. But we have to find more value in ourselves besides just those moments.
What have we taken in that’s not ours?
Is how we identify ourselves just what the world puts on us and the voices we’ve taken in? What’s actually in us? What did we come in here as? The patterns of our childhood that influence our thoughts, our behaviors, our reactions today…Maybe it’s time to not believe that anymore. Maybe that’s what this lifetime is about - who are we really and what has the world imposed on us and what have we taken in. That’s what I’m always trying to learn and grow through.”
Because beneath the daughter, the dancer, the diabetic, and the survivor - all of the identities, voices, and layers - what exists, simply, is love.
Maybe that’s what the “quiet hope” was, too. That “spark of why we exist.”
Because once she found love in dance, she had to learn to find the love for herself to seek help. To admit she needed it, too. She learned to value and accept the love of her sister and the women around her, who insisted on helping her. She learned to find love for herself in spite of the wrong men, or the grief and abuse that came with them. And she learned to rediscover that love for movement with teaching, speaking, and connecting.
When all of those identities are stripped away, love is what remains.
Left foot. Right foot. Close.
Tendu. Straighten.
Left foot. Right foot. Close.
Do it again.
Because maybe, just maybe, if she could teach her students these steps, they could be light on their toes.
Do it again.
Because maybe, just maybe, if she could teach them these steps, she’d give them something to run to.
Do it again.
Because maybe, just maybe, if she could teach them these steps, she could teach them what she spent a lifetime learning herself:
You don't have to be perfect.
You don't have to be strong.
You don’t have to go through it all alone.
And maybe that is the greatest gift Zippora could give them—not a way to escape themselves, but a way to find themselves.
Because the steps were never the point.
She was.
