Word: chace
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Then a greying, grandmotherly woman wearing dancing slippers put a Strauss waltz on the phonograph and went to work. As always, the goal for Marian Chace, 62, the nation's leading dance therapist, was to make contact with the mentally ill, through music and movement...
Although she had seemingly accomplished her aim ("My job is to make a crack-through"). Therapist Chace knew full well that the effects of the session might be fleeting. But psychiatrists who have watched her strike some response in the minds of mental patients, are convinced of the value of her work. Dancing with her, patients sometimes cry out, "This is me!" Says St. Elizabeths' Superintendent Winfred Overholser: "There is no question but that Miss Chace's dance therapy is one means of bringing patients back to reality...
Although she is most successful with schizophrenics, Dancer Chace works with all kinds of mental patients, twice a week goes into the wards. She allows her patients full freedom in dancing out their emotions (one woman smashed the record when an aide forced her into a formal polka). When a combative patient makes a menacing advance, she may win him over by sinking to the floor and smiling, to show that she is no threat. The breakthrough may take weeks, e.g., not until two months after she had asked one patient if he had studied dancing did he break...
...Great Pleasures." Rhode Island-born Marian Chace grew up in Washington after her newsman father switched from the Providence Journal to the Washington Star. She once studied with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, has taught dancing all her adult life. In the mid-'30s Washington psychiatrists began sending her children who were having difficulty in school or at home. In 1942, after she had had some success, Dr. Overholser invited her to work at St. Elizabeths as the first U.S. dance therapist. At that time, most psychiatrists felt that it was impossible to work in groups with acute...
...interested in the mentally ill has Therapist Chace become that she has taken basic courses at the Washington School of Psychiatry, regularly attends clinical sessions at the hospital. She has trained most of the nation's dance therapists, is also a leader in the related field of drama therapy. Full of honors and awards, Marian Chace still feels a surge of triumph when a patient manages to dance his way-however briefly-out of his world of isolation. Says she: "They offer to carry the record player, or choose a record, or get together to plan a production. These...