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Grace & Will
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By John McIntosh
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California-born Zippora Karz started dancing at age seven, and even then her teachers noticed she had a special talent. By age 15, she’d won a scholarship to the School of American Ballet—the official school of the New York City Ballet (NYCB)—and moved to New York City. Three years later, in 1983, she became an apprentice, and one year after that she was a full member of the company. Her career was blossoming. Then, in 1987, at 21, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
“Peter Martins and Jerome Robbins, codirectors of the NYCB, knew about my diagnosis, but I really didn’t talk about what I was dealing with,” she says. “I was in denial, thinking that if I took care of the problem it would go away.
“It was a magical time in the ballet scene: George Balanchine, who founded the NYCB, was still alive and creating. Baryshnikov and Nureyev would come take classes. And I’d worked so hard to get there.
“But when I was diagnosed with diabetes, I went from feeling like anything was possible to feeling like everything was an obstacle. Type 1 and dancing presented me with a very difficult challenge at a very young age, and right at the beginning of my career.” Zippora was promoted to soloist in 1993: “I never missed a performance because of my diabetes.”
For Zippora to stay on top in her competitive world, she had to learn how to tightly monitor her blood glucose levels and to find out how insulin worked in the body of a dancer. Not one professional dancer, ballet or otherwise, was on record as going through her experience.
Because a ballerina’s performance schedule is on-and-off, it was very difficult for Zippora to establish a routine of testing and shots: “We’d perform a different piece every night. The Nutcracker was the only piece we ever did consistently, and that was a five-week run. So I could never predict how much energy I’d be using one day to the next.”
Though she never had a set schedule, any given day might have gone like this: Wake up at 8 a.m., test. Take insulin if necessary, eat. Get to the studio for classes and rehearsal by 10:30. Over the six-hour rehearsal period, test about once per hour; take insulin if necessary; eat during a break (no regular lunch schedule). At 6:30 p.m., test again and prepare for evening performance at 8 p.m. Test during any long breaks in the performance. At 11 p.m., after the performance, test again and take insulin if needed.
“It took me a long time to figure out how much insulin to take on any given day, for any performance,” she says. “And back then the insulin wasn’t as fast-acting as it is now.”
There were many times in the beginning when her blood sugar would plummet while she was onstage. She eventually realized that her doctors did not understand just how aerobic the activity of a ballerina was. “Most people cannot imagine how athletic a ballerina’s life really is. One doctor had me taking too much insulin. Another told me that I didn’t need to take it at all. Can you imagine? They really didn’t know how to deal with me. I realized I was going to have to take responsibility for myself. I found I needed to check my blood sugar frequently—sometimes 20 times per day. And I had to figure out my insulin doses all by myself.
“It was often safer for me to let my blood sugars run a little bit higher than I’d like. At times my performance was not that good, but I didn’t know what else to do to keep my glucose levels from going too low in the middle of a show. Sometimes I couldn’t feel my toes. I’d say to myself, ‘It’s okay, the audience won’t know.’ But the director and my partners would know if I was off a little bit.
“The pressure was huge—I was constantly trying to show that there was nothing wrong with me. The whole time I’m thinking, ‘Am I crazy or what? Is it realistic for someone with diabetes to do this?’”
Now, as a répétiteur for the George Balanchine Trust, which oversees the performance of all Balanchine ballets, Zippora travels around the world teaching ballet companies the ballets she was so blessed to dance in for 16 years. “Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of work over in Europe, and quite a bit in the U.S. Between that and my teaching responsibilities here in Southern California, I stay pretty busy,” she says.
“I’m looking at 40, and I feel better than I have in my entire life. After years of struggling with my diabetes, well, I’m not struggling anymore. I want to share a message with other people with diabetes: You can do anything you want to do. Your dreams are all possible.”
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