At age 21, three years into a promising career with the New York City Ballet Company, dancing in eight shows a week, attending daily rehearsals and taking classes, Zippora Karz felt sick.

In The Sugarless Plum, Karz has a chilling ability, for such a young writer, to take the cadence of dance and turn it into this suspenseful, fast-paced memoir of her day-by-day journey to discover the source of her illness.

While managing her own career in ballet and independently handling health problems, Karz showed unusual maturity. Yet, of course, on receiving the diagnosis of diabetes, she was young enough to think: “Things like that don’t happen to people like me.”

This girl was clearly born to dance and was driven to conquer her medical problems: “Most important of all, when I got my head out of the way and let the music flow through my body, I felt something bigger, grander, purer and more meaningful than anything I had ever experienced at any other time in my life.”

Her life was rich with talent, caring mentors and family, and opportunities to dance for Mr. B, as in Balanchine. She danced with the corps in some of his well-known works, and was one of only four company dancers chosen as demi-soloists. One lucky day she even danced with Balanchine, when he thought her partner needed some inspiration. Such enormous pressure for a young girl. The Sugarless Plum is a powerful memoir of Karz’s trials, struggles, sacrifices, loneliness and exhaustion.

All along the way, Karz was afraid of what was happening to her, yet again and again saying “This can’t be happening.” Mix the nervous anxiety of performing in a ballet company with insomnia, sores, painful muscles, trembling and instability, and your heart nearly breaks for this girl.

Article Author: Helen Gallagher

Helen Gallagher reviews non-fiction books and shares insights when attending author and publishing events on Chicago's North Shore. She is a national speaker on technology, writing and publishing. She's a member of American Society of Journalists & …

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