Marian Chace

Marian Chace (31 October 1896 – 19 July 1970) is one of the founders of modern dance therapy.

She studied modern dance and choreography with Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis at the Denishawn School of Dance and started work as a dance performer. However she believied that the body and mind are interrelated, and influenced by the work of Carl Jung. She began to teach in Washington D.C. and noticed some of her students were more interested in the expression of emotions than in dance technique and began to emphasise this in her classes. Her students reported feelings of well being which intrigued local doctors who began to send some of their patients to her classes. Eventually she joined the staff at St. Elizabeth’s hospital in Washington D.C. and studied at the Washington School of Psychiatry. Chace started to teach in schools and hospitals advocating and lecturing on the therapeutic benefits of dance.^[1]

She worked for a number of years with patients at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, MD.

In the 1960s she founded a training program for dance therapists New York. In 1966 she founded the American Dance Therapy Association and became its first president.

References

1. ^ Marian Chace Biography

healthpronet.org/ahp_month/04_05.html

Persondata
Name	Chace, Marian
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	31 October 1896
Place of birth
Date of death	19 July 1970
Place of death