Meet Katy
Katy lived her childhood years in middle TN spending her time dancing: classical ballet, pointe, lyrical, jazz, tap, and hip hop. Her dance teacher, Ms. Lisa was instrumental in challenging her abilities and growing her love of dance. After 15 years of dance training and performance, her new goal was to become a physical therapist. She dreamed of working in a performing arts rehabilitation center in a big city surrounded by dance and music and theater.
While working toward a degree in Biology at Belmont University in Nashville, TN, she continued to pursue her own dance performance passion by auditioning for and joining the dance company led and trained by Debbie Belue. She was a profound inspiration on Katy during her time at Belmont. Katy was chosen for roles in jazz, tap, modern, and musical therapy performances. She earned enough credits, from core ballet, jazz, tap, and modern classes, but also more specialized classes such as dance kinesiology, dance composition and performance, and dance history, to graduate Belmont with a minor in dance in addition to her B.S. in Biology.
She chose to attend UT Chattanooga for PT school and graduated with a clinical doctorate in physical therapy summa cum laude in 2014. She married her high school sweetheart, Bruce, and jumped into a career where he lived in North AL. She has spent the last 12 years specializing in orthopedics and post-operative care specific to local physicians and surgeons in Madison County. During this time, she became a mother to two amazing children, Madelyn and Lucas, and in the joys and trials of life, she had almost forgotten her passion for dance and how it led to her career in physical therapy.
When she enrolled her daughter in preschool ballet, the memories began flooding in. After much hesitation, Katy joined an adult ballet and tap class locally with some of the most tenacious and passionate women in dance at Adonai School of Ballet and Fine Arts and she never looked back. A spark had been lit. She began intentionally seeking opportunities in her workplace to care for youth dancers in her community and ignited her passion for dance once more.
It was two years later that Katy began to realize that her story, which had been God’s story on her life all along, was adding up to something greater than she was currently living and working. That God was stirring in her heart an idea, a dream once lost to the toils of higher education and the burdens of student loans and bills, but also to the joys of falling in love and starting a family and investing in a community. Katy began realizing that the education, the experiences, the passion, and the support of her family and community had put her in a unique position to dig up the dream of combing dance and physical therapy into a newly tangible goal.
With much support from her family and dance community, in 2026, Katy started Prima PT to reach local dancers before injury so that they can stay in the studio and on the stage by providing wellness workshops. In addition to injury prevention, she is passionate about assisting pre-professional dancers reach their physical and skill goals safely through expertly and experientially designed dancer evaluations. Speaking the language and knowing the demands of the dancer is essential to prevention and recovery. In addition to caring for the physical hazards of being a dancer, Katy is also knowledgeable and passionate about identifying when good flexibility may actually be a hypermobility genetic condition requiring specialized diagnosis and care.
Katy is a member of the International Association for Dance Medicine as well as the American Physical Therapy Association. She is Progressing Ballet Technique certified. She has a personal goal to travel yearly to NYC and take tap class alongside professional performers.
