Using a Special Skill for Healing : The chiropractor treats dancers’ injuries by combining her medical training with a lifelong talent.

Sitting in a doctor’s office in Burbank, dancer Patty Watrak tried to describe the ballet step that left her with a pain so severe that she could barely place pressure on her left hip.

After listening intently, chiropractor Michele Simmons could visualize the dance step and what had probably caused the injury--but she wanted to be sure.

“Was one of them like this?” Simmons asked, as she did a ballet step known as a ronde jambe en l’aire , with an amazed Watrak looking on.

“I was surprised that she knew what I was talking about,” said Watrak, 35, of Palmdale. “I was so impressed. . . . It was refreshing to go to a chiropractor who understands exactly what you’re talking about as far as dance terminology.”

Simmons knows the terminology, the moves and a whole lot more.

Known as the “Dancin’ Doctor,” Simmons is also a dancer, choreographer and dance instructor. Since opening her Burbank practice last year, she has combined her training in chiropractic with her skills and talent in dance. The result is a practice that treats injured dancers the way Simmons believes that they deserve to be treated: as athletes with urgent needs that require specialized treatment.

“I became a chiropractor because I knew there was a need for more doctors who understood the specific rigors of professional dance,” Simmons said. “When a dancer says I was doing a ronde jambe en l’aire to the left and I felt this pain, I understand.”

A member of the Cal State Long Beach Dance Department who has also taught at UCLA, CalArts and schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Simmons has been dancing for nearly as long as she has been walking.

When she was 3, her parents placed her in a ballet class at the Bernice Johnson School of Dance, a highly acclaimed dance school in New York, to correct a balance problem. The problem went away within months, but Simmons stayed at the school and in the world of dance. She went on to attend the High School of the Performing Arts, where her schoolmates included choreographer Michael Peters and Ben Vereen. But her greatest inspirations were Bernice Johnson, her early teacher and mentor, and UC Irvine professor Donald McKayle, an African-American dance master who was recently awarded the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, the highest honor in modern dance.

“Bernice Johnson was the guiding light and Donnie just took that light and energy and focused it,” she said.

For years, Simmons shared her light with audiences throughout the United States and Europe. In the decades she spent on stage dancing with greats such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Sammy Davis Jr., Lola Falana and the Inner City Repertory Dance Company, she learned one enduring lesson: The art of dance, she said, lies in the dancer’s ability to “go into the moment,” to give the audience performances that “come from within.”

“They’re looking at you, your eyes, your face. . . . It’s what’s coming out here that affects people,” she said, placing her hand on her heart.

There were times when she was so involved in the dance--especially when she danced roles in McKayle’s “Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder” and “Anjalito Negroes” that were created especially for her--that nothing else seemed to matter.

“So much so that I don’t remember the curtain calls,” she said. “I was never aware of the audience. I was in my own world.”

Simmons applied that same focused intensity when she decided to become a chiropractor. In the early ‘70s, she injured her shoulder dancing and was treated by a chiropractor who was able to cure the injury--something that medical doctors had not been able to do, she said.

The experience left a lasting impression on Simmons, who had always been interested in science. So in the late ‘80s, when she began performing less and focusing more on choreography, Simmons turned her sights to her second love and began working toward a chiropractic degree. She attended West Los Angeles College and Cleveland Chiropractic College, where she graduated magna cum laude.

It was no easy task.

“I told my friends not to call me for seven years,” she said. She studied in between teaching dance classes, choreographing for performers such as Janet Jackson, and on the plane for work abroad.

The effort was worth it, she said, and now she wears the titles of dancer and chiropractor with equal pride.

Her office on Riverside Drive carries images of her dual life. The walls of her treatment room are covered with posters of the muscular and skeletal systems, alongside photographs of dancers such as Dudley Williams, Mary Hinkson and Geneva Burk.

Simmons’ practice is open to anyone, but she chose to work with dancers because they often must turn to general physicians who may not understand the causes of their injury--and may not be able to treat it as quickly and effectively, she said.

“Dancers tend to stress the lower back and pelvic area just by the nature of the art form,” Simmons said. “They tend to have low back problems, knee problems, ankle problems and occasionally neck problems.”

Patients who visit Simmons’ office receive a range of chiropractic treatment, from muscle massages and physical therapy to a resetting of misaligned bones. In one method, known as the “sacro-occipital technique,” patients lie on a treatment table and padded wooden blocks are placed under them. The blocks are placed in such a way that the patient’s body weight corrects the misaligned bones, Simmons said.

Emmy award-winning dancer and choreographer Michael Peters, who has referred patients to Simmons, said she is already having an impact on the local dance community.

“It makes you feel safe,” Peters said. “. . . If there’s an injury on the set, people know that they can call her and she’ll take care of them.”

And not only does Simmons treat the injury, she also shows dancers how to avoid them.

Often she asks dancers to perform the basic ballet positions, or she will attend dance class with them to determine if there is a problem with their dance technique.

If there is a problem, Simmons--who is trained in a wide range of dance styles, including ballet, modern dance, jazz and tap--teaches them the correct way.

“The real life of a dancer is that work is scarce,” she said. “The gigs are few and far between. . . . When a dancer gets a gig, they can’t afford to get injured.”

For Simmons, life as a doctor and dancer is not so much a matter of moving between two worlds as it is finding the meeting ground between the two. During any given week, she scuttles between her office in Burbank, the campus of Cal State Long Beach, where she will be one of two faculty members directing the school’s new Dance Clinic, a dance medicine facility, and Cleveland Chiropractic College, where she teaches.

She also conducts annual master dance classes in France and Switzerland, lectures dancers on dance health and often serves as the official chiropractor for dancers in large productions such as the Academy Awards.

Simmons’ schedule can get hectic, but she’s not complaining--life’s full of all her favorite things. “I’m fortunate to be able to pursue all of my career passions,” she said.