Doctor With Special Dance History Works With Oklahoma City Ballet

It’s the busiest time of the year for dancers at the Oklahoma City Ballet. 

With numerous performances of The Nutcracker, the ballet dancers push their bodies to the limits for back-to-back shows.

Dr. Megan Meier is the company’s resident physician.

Meier is a sports medicine physician at Mercy Hospital, who has grown her relationship with the OKC Ballet over the years.

She now has an office underneath the company’s performance space, where dancers can come for special treatment.

“There is just a lot of explosive, powerful activity that these dancers just make look so effortless, and it does take a toll on the body,” Meier said.

Meier didn’t just stumble into this special relationship with the ballet. Dance has a special place in her heart.

“I was a dancer many years ago. Never at this level, but it was definitely something that once you start dancing, it becomes a passion. So, my thing was that I had an injury that kind of sidelined me,” Meier said.

Without a doctor who truly understood her dancer's body, a simple sprain ended Meier's dancing career.

“That's what lead me to be premed and want to take care of dancers instead of being one,” Meier said.

Meier has become, for local dancers, what she never had herself, a sports medicine professional who respects ballerinas and ballerinos as true athletes.

“The approach to recovery is more functional because she realizes we can't be out as long as the average person to heal,” soloist dancer Walker Martin said.