Former Dancer Studies How Ballet Can Prevent Falls for Older Adults

ATLANTA — Caroline Simpkins (M.S. ’19, Ph.D. ’24) learned a great deal from her 15 years as a ballet dancer and teacher.

“My favorite class to teach was ballet for adults,” she said. “I saw firsthand how ballet training helped my adult students strengthen their muscles, improve their posture and develop better balance, which are all factors that can decrease someone’s risk of falling.”

This inspired Simpkins, a kinesiology doctoral student in Georgia State University’s College of Education & Human Development, to write her dissertation on whether — and how — ballet training can prevent falls for older adults.

She received funding from Georgia State, Emory University and the American Society of Biomechanics to support her dissertation research, which involved comparing two groups of older adults — one group taking ballet classes and one group with no formal dance training — to determine how their bodies responded to slipping.

“They came to the Biomechanics Lab and they walked on a special treadmill that slipped them multiple times while standing and walking. This way, we could study their reactions and record their leg muscle activity,” Simpkins said. “Overall, the older ballet dancers did a better job of controlling their body’s response to the slips, which shows that ballet may be associated with a reduced fall risk in older adults.”

Simpkins also learned more about how the brain influences human biomechanics as part of the Brains and Behavior Fellowship in Georgia State’s Neuroscience Institute. This program brings together graduate students from disparate disciplines whose research contributes to the field of neuroscience.

Her research in biomechanics and neuroscience came together when she participated in the university’s Three-Minute Thesis competition, where master’s and doctoral students explain their work in three-minute presentations.

Simpkins credits her dance background for giving her the skills needed for the competition — rehearsing regularly, speaking confidently in front of a crowd and waiting patiently for her turn on stage. And her hard work paid off when she was awarded first place in the doctoral category.

“I was the very last competitor to present, which actually reminded me of when I danced the Sugar Plum Fairy in ‘The Nutcracker’ several years ago,” she explained. “The Sugar Plum Fairy is a very challenging role for a ballet dancer, and one of the hardest things about it is that you don’t dance until the very end of the two-hour performance and must find a way to remain calm and focused backstage while you wait for your entrance. When they announced my name as the first-place doctoral winner, I was surprised and very honored.”

After graduating this spring, Simpkins will continue her research at Georgia State as a postdoctoral fellow studying fall prevention with Associate Professor Feng Yang.

“I have had a wonderful experience at Georgia State as a student for the past seven years — two years as a master’s student and five years as a Ph.D. student — and it feels strange that my student days are now over,” she said. “But I am excited to take on this new role in our lab and continue my development as a research scientist.”

— Story by Claire Miller, Photo by Richard Calmes