The Sugarless Plum: A Memoir (13 page)

My thoughts were racing off in every direction. On the one hand, nothing was going to take my career away from me. I had to dance. And I had to admit to myself that more than anything I hoped to someday be a soloist ballerina. Performing was the greatest joy of my life. It
was
my life. Nothing would stop me.

On the other hand, I felt defeated. Suddenly my dreams seemed entirely out of reach. I feared that I wouldn't be able to do the things I dreamed of doing. I thought about Jerry Robbins's not having chosen me to repeat my role in
The Goldberg Variations
or for any other lead in almost two years. I remembered how he had walked away during my solo in
Les Petits Riens.
Jerry hated weakness in any form. To my mind, it now seemed that he must have sensed what was going on in my body. Of course, in reality, he could have walked away for any number of reasons, but I was convinced that he had left the wing because he didn't want to continue watching me dance. How could I blame him for rejecting me? I would have rejected myself.

Why did I think I could beat the odds? I had wanted a magical, artistic life. What I'd gotten was a new diagnosis. Now my entire world seemed to be crashing down around me.

“Stop being so dramatic!” the voice in my head yelled back at me. “Stop being such a victim. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself. You're young, you dance with the New York City Ballet. You'll find a way even if you won't be Suzanne Farrell. Even if you never get to be a soloist, you'll find a way to manage. You have to dance.”

 

Throughout that winter season and through the spring, I was learning how to dance all day while secretly taking my insulin shots.

Routine is crucial to determining how much insulin to inject. I had no routine. Every ballet was different; some had a lot of jumps and aerobic running around the stage, while others were slow and controlled with little huffing and puffing. Every program was different, as well: some nights I danced in the first ballet; sometimes I danced in all three. I ate lunch at a different time every day. Many days I had so many rehearsals that Rosemary asked me to skip my lunch break altogether.

This meant that the only routine I had was checking my sugars every chance I got. As soon as Rosemary said, “Dancers, take five,” I ran to the bathroom and checked my blood. If I was too high I took a shot, too low I ate some figs or dates. I was walking a tightrope, trying to mimic the body's miraculous innate calculations. I had to keep my sugars as close to normal as I could without overdoing it, but it was difficult to gauge exactly how much insulin
to take. More often than not, I would take too much and have to eat something sweet to offset it.

Obsessed with my blood sugar numbers, I stopped going to dinner with Catherine and Stacey so I could stay home, eat my own no-carbohydrate food and monitor myself. I was in a different universe from everyone around me. It was not lost on me that as a dancer I was always trying to achieve perfect balance, and now I was trying to perfectly balance my blood sugar levels, as well.

My way of coping was to not let myself give in to my fears, and when I had weak moments I was determined not to let anyone see my struggle. I didn't want to talk about it, not even with Romy or my mother. Now that I was on insulin, I'd given up on the idea that I could heal myself. I just wanted to deal with it, and the only one who could help me with that was my doctor.

 

I was becoming increasingly isolated, but that's the way I wanted it. One afternoon when everyone else headed out to the deli on our lunch break, I was suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion. I'd been holding it all together, but in that moment, for some reason, the stress of juggling my blood sugars and trying to keep up with everyone else just felt like too much.

I went to one of the empty dressing rooms, lay down on a cot to nap, and before I knew it, I was crying. I tried not to make any noise in case there was anyone around, so I just lay down on my side, hid my face in the pillow and wept. The next thing I knew there was a dancer lying on the cot beside me, rubbing my back and comforting me. Normally, I would have stopped and pre
tended to have been asleep, but her soothing hand only made me cry more. While I sobbed quietly, I wondered who it might be. I dreaded turning around and facing this person who was so tender and nurturing in my moment of weakness. Finally, when the tears stopped, I turned around to thank her. There in the cot by my side was my little sister, Romy. Neither of us said a word, but I knew in that moment—if I hadn't before—just how much she loved me.

Having any kind of serious illness is always an isolating experience, and all the more so when everyone around you is so physically strong. For that reason alone, it was particularly meaningful for me to know that I could confide in Romy. My mother was there for me, too. Silent as always, but ever present. It was profoundly comforting to know that they were so unconditionally supportive no matter how distant or uncommunicative I might be.

 

Slowly, I began to figure out how much exercise each rehearsal and performance required, how it affected my sugar levels, and how much insulin to take. Although I'd given up on Jerry's choosing me for a lead, I never stopped wishing Peter would think of me for something special.

During rehearsal period, the most reliable way to get your schedule was to call a special number and listen to the taped recording of which rehearsals were scheduled for the next day. Calling that number meant that I had to listen to the rehearsal schedule for everyone in the company. Hearing who was learning what roles made me nervous, especially now that I was
so afraid of being passed over. I wanted to be happy for the good fortune of others, but I had to admit that it was depressing to hear which younger dancers were learning the roles I longed for.

Then, in the early fall, something fantastic happened. Listening to the recording one evening, I heard my name read out with a long list of principal ladies. Peter Martins had called me to learn one of the five leading ballerina roles in Balanchine's
Divertimento No. 15
, set to music by Mozart.

For a while after
Les Petits Riens
, which I had come to associate with my diabetes diagnosis, I couldn't even listen to Mozart's music. I'd even grown to hate yellow, the color of my costume. But that was now all in the past.
Divert
was the perfect ballet for me. It's a classical “tutu” ballet. It isn't one of the hardest of his ballets, and although it requires strength, it's all about purity of movement, heart and soul. It's the kind of ballet I love the most—classical with Balanchine's signature modern touches.

This was the third big role for which Peter had chosen me. It meant that he still wanted to use me, even after my diagnosis.

 

The company would be leaving for a European tour before the beginning of the fall season in New York, and
Divert
was to be one of the pieces we'd perform on that tour. We rehearsed for a couple of weeks before Peter came to watch the various casts. He had to decide who would dance with whom and on which night. When casting was posted the week before we left for Europe, my name was listed with the first cast. I was the only one among the
five ladies dancing leads who was still in the corps de ballet. I was elated. This was such a boost of confidence for me.

Over the next days, I went out with Catherine, visited Stacey and hung out with my mom and Romy. I felt alive again. The smile I had faked for so many months finally felt real. I was elated to know that Peter still wanted to use me and to once again experience the artistic freedom I got from dancing a leading role.

In the early fall, the company set off for Europe for the first time since Balanchine's death. The tour was to start in Copenhagen, Denmark, Peter Martins's birthplace, where we would perform in the theater in Tivoli Gardens, the famous amusement park. It was an extremely important tour for the company, and in particular for Peter.

For me, it was not only my first trip to Europe but also the first time I would be performing a lead while taking insulin. Performing was different from taking class or rehearsing every day, because I wouldn't have the option to stop and check my blood sugars while I was onstage.
Divertimento
was the very first piece on the program opening night. I had no idea how it would go, and I felt a tremendous pressure to show Peter that he hadn't made a mistake by casting me. No one but Romy had any idea what I was up against.

 

On opening night, I was nervous and excited as I went through my usual preperformance transformation: applying my stage
makeup, tightening my hair in a bun, pinning on my rhinestone headpiece. I picked out my pointe shoes, warmed up my body for twenty minutes, then put on my costume. I checked my blood sugar levels: 120. Perfect.

The stage manager called, “Ten minutes, please,” and I headed for the stage along with the other dancers in the piece. I thought about Peter Martins watching. I thought about the Queen of Denmark being in the audience.

In the past, even since my diagnosis, the moment right before the curtain rose was when calmness came over me. Once the performance began I was always able to let go and rely on all the work I'd done to prepare. It was the moment I longed to experience, it was what I loved; the moment of the performance where the music took over, the moment when I stopped thinking and my body and the music became one.

As I took my opening position onstage, that didn't happen. Instead, my mind and body tensed. I suddenly worried about my sugars. What if I took too much insulin? What if performing sends them too low? What then?

I tried to calm down by telling myself that I could do it, and that everything would be fine.

The curtain rose and a cool breeze swept the stage.

 

The first step wasn't so bad as I jumped with one leg bent to the front. Then it all started to go downhill. I almost fell off pointe on the second step, an easy one, with my leg in arabesque. What was going on? This never happened in rehearsals. What
were my sugars? Were they off or was this nervousness? As I continued to dance, the only way to combat my nerves was to keep myself completely in the moment. I told myself: Point your toes, extend your arms, hold in your stomach, lift your chest. Oops, I thought, as I stumbled on the next balance. Don't do that again. Here comes another one. Point your toes harder, feel the back foot just as much as the front. More energy, more focus. Damn it, you almost fell over again.

Suddenly my feet went cold. Don't let that stop you, I told myself. Try harder, point harder. My words were like an inner scream. But the louder I screamed at my body, the less it heard me. I was more tired than usual and my legs felt shaky; my head was full and spacey, as if I were under water. By the end of the opening section of the ballet, I had fallen off most of my balances.

Now it was time for my solo. This was what really mattered. “Listen to the music,” I told myself. “Try to let go. Think how lovely it is.”

When it was time to jump, I barely left the floor.

“It's not working,” I screamed silently. “I can't let go.”

To let go, I had to stop thinking. But my thoughts never quieted. I prayed for the dance to end.

Finally, the curtain descended. Peter and Rosemary approached the stage to give us corrections. Rosemary went to the corps. From where I stood at the back of the stage with the other four women dancing leads, I saw Peter's shadow in the wing. He had taken a big chance letting me dance a solo on opening
night in his hometown. I couldn't look at him. I couldn't handle his disappointment.

Pretending that I hadn't seen him, I quickly turned and ran offstage in the opposite direction.

 

I raced upstairs to the dressing room, grabbed my meter and hurried into a bathroom stall. My blood sugar level was 150, which wasn't really that high. But it was high enough, combined with my nervousness, to affect my ability to perform well, and according to my doctor's protocol, anything above the normal range was considered too high. I had thought that the exercise would bring down my sugars. It would be a little while before I learned that anxiety and adrenaline can raise them. I had always loved being onstage no matter what role I was dancing. But tonight I had danced poorly, had no fun and I was terrified of what Peter thought.

 

I hated my body for ruining my life. In the dressing room, I grabbed a syringe, hid it in my sweatshirt and headed to the bathroom, where I jabbed the insulin into my belly.

Another thing I didn't yet know was that exercise has a continuous effect. The dancing I did in
Divert
would probably continue to lower my sugars for hours after the performance was over. I shouldn't have taken a shot of insulin at that moment.

 

There were two more ballets on the program. I wasn't in the middle piece, but I was in the corps of the last,
Glass Pieces, one
of Jerome Robbins's great works to music by Philip Glass. Jerry was so particular about corps performances that I was as nervous as I would have been dancing a lead. Jerry had rehearsed us every day for weeks before we left on tour, scrutinizing our every movement.

Over the loudspeaker, I heard the stage manager call, “Ten minutes.” I put on my costume, a red leotard and black skirt. For this ballet, each dancer wore a particular color leotard and a particular color skirt. Jerry was adamant about which girl should wear what. Sometimes girls tried to switch colors, but Jerry always caught them. He remembered every detail of his ballets. Being impeccable about details was part of what made him great.

Just as “five minutes” was called I began to shake. I was terrified. I worried that I'd taken too much. Before any more thoughts could race through my mind, everything went blank. I'd had low blood sugars before, but something was different this time. Panic surged through my body. Was I going to pass out? Right then? Yes, I felt I was going to black out. “If I don't do something fast, I'm going to lose my mind,” I thought. The possibility of insulin shock suddenly flashed in my head.

I bolted back up the stairs to the dressing room and pulled my monitor out of my bag. My hand shook so hard I could barely get the drop of blood I needed onto my strip and into the monitor for the reading. The main roller coaster from Tivoli Gardens happened to go right by the dressing room window. There I was, in the middle of an amusement park, listening to the blissful screams of people on a roller coaster, while I was on a private roller coaster of my own. I threw a handful of glucose tablets down
my throat and waited the necessary two minutes for the monitor to do its job. I should have taken them even before I used the monitor, but I wasn't thinking clearly. I knew I was having a severe low blood sugar reaction, but when the monitor finally beeped, I couldn't believe the reading it displayed. Twenty! I didn't know I could still be conscious with my blood sugar that low.

I had never taken glucose tablets before. Although I always had them on hand in case of emergency, I'd never had to take them. Figs and dates had always been enough to give my sugars the boost they needed. How many tablets would I need? I had no idea, so I downed as many as I could. The call “Onstage” came over the loudspeaker.

I ran down the stairs to stage level.
I have to find Romy…where is Romy? I was in a daze as dancers ran past me toward the stage.
I was in all three sections of
Glass Pieces. As a new member of
the company, Romy was just in the second section, in what was essentially a nondancing role. When I found her, she took one look at me and realized that something was terribly wrong. “What's happening to you?” she asked. I couldn't speak.

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. I could barely think straight, so I took it off and watched as she hurriedly put it on. I put on her orange leotard and black overwrap just as the stage manager called, “Zippora Karz, we are waiting to begin.”

“Okay,” Romy said, trembling, “tell me what to do.”

For a moment we just stared at each other. There were so
many things she would need to know: all my counts and steps, the entrances and exits, coordinating with the other dancers—how could I tell her all this in less than sixty seconds? And the counts for
Glass Pieces
were not the standard two-four or six-eight. It was minimalist music. The counts were two in this direction and five in that, seven over here and ten over there.

There was no way.

“Zippora” again came over the loudspeaker. I said to Romy, “Give me back my costume.”

 

I knew the glucose eventually had to work. Luckily, there was no actual dancing for me in the first two sections, just a lot of patterns and those complicated counts. I don't remember much about the first movement. What I remember most is the second. I was the leader of the line of women who emerge from the wings in silhouette upstage. The whole audience is focused on us. I didn't know if I would remember my counts. But, even more, would the glucose have worked by then or would I pass out? I couldn't faint onstage. I knew it had to work and that I just had to stay in the moment.

“My name is Zippora,” I said to myself, trying to keep myself focused, “and I'm going to be all right…one-two-three-four… My name is Zippora, and I'm going to be all right.” I talked myself through it and no one seemed to notice. After the performance I went back to the hotel, more concerned that I'd danced poorly than about the health risk I'd created for myself.

Beyond giving me the usual corrections, neither Peter nor
anyone else ever said anything about my performance in
Divert.
I did dance it once more later in the tour, and even though I would, as always, have liked to be better, without the anxieties of opening night my performance was greatly improved.

 

After Copenhagen, we went on to the Netherlands and Scotland, and then to Paris.

In Paris, after the gala performance, we all dressed in gowns and heels and attended a black tie dinner at the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall). When we arrived, the principals and soloists were escorted to their tables. The corps de ballet dancers were taken to a separate room where there were no tables. Catherine and I were at the buffet, marveling at the architecture and totally oblivious to the fact that there were no soloists or principal dancers in the room, when suddenly principal dancer Ib Andersen came up behind us, sputtering “This is an outrage! Mr. B would never let this happen!”

Ib had been on tour many times with Balanchine, so he knew that ever since the 1934 party for
Serenade,
the first ballet Mr. B had choreographed in America, he always ate with his dancers, including those in the corps de ballet. After that premiere, the audience was served a meal at the Warburg Estate, where
Serenade
had been danced. Balanchine was discovered eating outside with his dancers, who had not been invited in.

“I'm not going to sit in that room with the other principals unless everybody's welcome there,” Ib said now. “I'm staying here with you.”

Catherine and I blushed and giggled like schoolgirls as he went to get a plate of food.

Like Peter Martins, Ib was Danish and had come to the United States to dance for Balanchine. If Peter Martins was the aristocratic, handsome king, Ib was the angelic boyish prince.

Catherine and I both had a secret crush on him even though he was openly gay. His sexual preference didn't stop women from swooning over him, nor him from flirting with his partners and all the girls. We were amazed that he was talking to us when he could have been with all the “important” people. We thought he was adorable and dreamy. When he returned with his food, we tried to act as if we were really sophisticated.

 

Back in the hotel room I got into my pajamas and went to brush my teeth. The toothpaste was next to my blood sugar meter, and as I reached for it I knocked the meter so hard that it went crashing to the floor. I picked it up, turned it on and nothing happened. My meter was broken, and it hadn't occurred to me to bring a backup. Until that moment, I hadn't realized that my life was dependent on that monitor. I didn't even own a second one.

I needed to know my blood sugar levels. How much insulin should I take before going to bed? Every night had been different. What should I do? Romy was staying in a different hotel. When I called her in a panic, she told me to call the company's physical therapist.

The therapist traveling with us was named Katy. When I reached her, she tried to calm me down, but I burst into tears.
After hours of trying to phone the States to get a meter sent overnight, we gave up. It was a weekend, and nothing was going to happen until Monday.

After I'd spent a sleepless night, Katy took me to a pharmacy where I paid an exorbitant amount for a meter with a different calibration system. Reading it was like trying to read Japanese. Not having that lifeline was terrifying. I sat in the therapy room sobbing. For months I had tried so hard to hide what was going on, but now I couldn't hide it any longer. I knew that word of all this would get back to Peter. What would he think of my consistency and reliability now? I wanted to control my sobbing, but I couldn't. It was a terrible end to a difficult tour.