Marian Chace

Marian Chace was born on October 31, 1896, in Providence, Rhode Island, to journalist Daniel Chace and teacher-writer Harriet Edgaretta Northrop. After unsatisfying study at Pembroke College and the Corcoran School of Art, a back injury redirected her toward movement. A physician recommended dance for rehabilitation, and what began as physical recovery became, in her own words, a natural means of communication that would shape her entire career.

In 1923 Chace entered the Denishawn School of Dance in New York, studying under Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. She married fellow Denishawn dancer Lester Shafer in 1924, performed in vaudeville, and later taught and performed in Washington, D.C. Around 1927 the couple rejoined Denishawn, then opened a Washington branch where Chace choreographed, staged pageants and directed a company while absorbing influences from Martha Graham, Mary Wigman and Harald Kreutzberg. Her marriage ended in 1938, but her studio practice continued to evolve.

The turning point came through teaching students who had no ambition to become professional dancers. Chace observed that some returned repeatedly because moving helped them communicate and feel better. Rather than making technique the only measure, she adapted classes to each individual's needs. Pediatricians and psychiatrists began referring patients to her, and she learned to read posture, tension, rhythm and gesture as forms of expression rather than as technical errors to correct.

In 1942 Chace was invited to St. Elizabeths Hospital, the federal psychiatric institution in Washington, D.C., where wartime casualties and severely isolated patients received care before modern psychotropic medications became widely available. She developed "Dance for Communication" groups using rhythmic activity, mirroring, shared movement and verbal reflection to create contact among people for whom speech had become inaccessible or limited. She became the hospital's first full-time dance therapist in 1947. A 1959 TIME report documented her work in the wards and the medical recognition of her ability to reach patients through group movement.

Chace also worked at Chestnut Lodge after a 1946 invitation, studied psychodrama and attended the Washington School of Psychiatry. By the early 1950s she devoted herself entirely to therapeutic work, writing articles, offering workshops, training interns and teaching beyond the hospitals. Her approach linked body action, symbolic movement, kinesthetic empathy and rhythmic group activity. She reflected a participant's movement so it could be recognized as communication, then expanded it without imposing a predetermined interpretation.

In 1966 Chace helped establish the American Dance Therapy Association and served as its first president through 1968. Mandatory retirement ended her federal appointment at St. Elizabeths on her seventieth birthday, but she continued full-time work at Chestnut Lodge until her death on July 19, 1970. The Marian Chace Foundation now supports research, publications, lectures and education in the field she helped create.