This article was prepared by the Australian Performing Arts Conservatory, one of BTB's newest affiliate sites.



As you sit in the audience staring up at the stage, what do you see? A dancer gracefully floating, seamlessly completing her routine. The song is somber and slow. Her movements are practiced and perfected. But you notice that it is not just her body that enthralls you, her face tells a story too. You can see the deep connection she has with the song and dance through her thought-provoking facial expressions.

Dance judge and choreographer Eddie Strachan explains that facial expressions add another dimension to the performance, allowing the audience to connect on a deeper level.

Knowing this, let us step out of the audience members seat and into your dancing shoes. You, as the performer, must consider every muscle movement as you perform, including the 43 muscles in your face.

Here are 10 ways to control your facial expressions while dancing. Mastering these will greatly enhance your overall performance come showtime.

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Summary (From Goodreads):
For dancer Zippora Karz, a rising young star with the famed New York City Ballet, being diagnosed with diabetes could easily have ended all her dreams....

Balancing ballet and her blood sugar would be a long and difficult struggle for Karz, but eventually she learned to value her body and work with it, rather than rage at its limitations. In The Sugarless Plum, Karz shares her journey from denial, shame and mis-education about her illness to how she lead an active, balanced, and satisfying life as an insulin-dependent diabetic and ballet star. Through her fascinating story, those struggling with diabetes and other serious illnesses can find encouragement and inspiration as well as practical advice on achieving physical and emotional wellness. 

After sixteen years with the New York City Ballet, Karz retired and took her passion and skills into a whole new arena as a diabetes educator and advocate, where today she inspires people to not just manage their illness, but to thrive and fulfill their passions. The Sugarless Plum takes readers deep into the heart and soul of a young dancer, and is a remarkable testament to determination and perseverance.

Zippora’s memoir is touching, inspirational, dramatic, and profound. I felt 100% in her shoes through her story, not just because I am a dancer and can relate to a lot of the experiences, but because of the way she has written it. She writes like the whole thing is magic—because Ballet is magic. I just can’t think of words to describe how much I loved this book.

There was a lot of information about Diabetes in the text, and I did skip over a paragraph occasionally. But for the most part, it all fit in perfectly. She described how she worried about how much insulin to take before a show so that she wouldn't faint on stage. She told about how she was in complete denial for a while. She told about the horror to find that after she broke down and tested her blood after eating off-diet for so long, and her reading was off the charts—and another time, while she was having short black-outs, her reading was so low she didn’t know that a human’s blood sugar level could get that low… and how she felt in all those situations.

How Zippora felt was a key element running through the book. It wasn’t just “this is my story, hope you enjoy.” It read like a fiction novel.

Would a non-dancer relate to this book? Yes I believe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t have the same respect for what she went through as I do, but they would still relate. I danced through injuries and illnesses and partnered people who could at any moment throw up all over me and had six-hour rehearsals en pointe and stayed at the studio from 8:00am to 7:30 pm with only a few crackers and water keeping me alive and ate dinner at 11:30 at night. I remember how it feels. But Zippora’s memoir tells us how it is in the professional world—which is all that I mentioned to a higher degree—and does it in a way that you don’t have to have that background to understand and relate to it and feel it.

THE SUGARLESS PLUM wasn’t just for dancers. It’s for anyone who dreams of the stage. Any athlete who suffers from an illness or an injury, either Diabetes or otherwise. It shows people that although they may not be able to overcome or fix a chronic disease, but it is possible to achieve your goal and cope with it and still achieve what you dream of most.

Content: There is one scene with a brief mention of sex but no explicit details, and there is no language.

Recommendation: Ages 12+ to anyone who has ever dreamed about the stage, any athlete who suffers from Diabetes and needs encouragement, or anyone who loves a touching and inspirational memoir.