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

Providence, Rhode Island Providence () is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Rhode Island, most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. The county seat of Providence County, Rhode Island, Providence County, it is o ...

, the daughter of Daniel Champlin Chace, a journalist and editor, and Harriet Edgaretta (Northrop) Chace. Her younger siblings were Marjorie (1899–1991), Olive (1905–1977), and Edgar Northrop Chace (1908–1983). She studied modern

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

and

choreography Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design itself. A chor ...

with Ted Shawn and

Ruth St. Denis Ruth St. Denis (born Ruth Dennis; January 20, 1879 – July 21, 1968) was an American pioneer of modern dance, introducing eastern ideas into the art and paving the way for other women in dance. She was inspired by the Delsarte advocate Gene ...

at the

Denishawn The Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in Los Angeles, California, helped many perfect their dancing talents and became the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional ...

School of Dance and started work as a dance performer. She later moved to Washington, D.C., and opened her own studio. As she developed her teaching she believed that the body and mind are interrelated, and was influenced by the work of

Harry Stack Sullivan Herbert "Harry" Stack Sullivan (February 21, 1892 – January 14, 1949) was an American neo-Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who held that "personality can never be isolated from the complex interpersonal relationships in which person liv ...

. She began to teach in Washington D.C. and Wondered why people who were not wanting to be performers continued to take dance classes. She began to change her teaching methods as she observed her students closely. Her students reported feelings of well being which intrigued local doctors, some of the National Institutes of Health, who began to send some of their patients to her classes. Her approach developed into the use of body action, symbolism, therapeutic movement relationship, and rhythmic group activity when she eventually joined the staff at St. Elizabeths hospital in southeast Washington D.C. and studied at the Washington School of Psychiatry. Chace taught in schools and hospitals advocating and lecturing on the therapeutic benefits of dance/body movement. She worked for number of years with patients at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville Maryland. She taught a course at Turtle Bay Music school in New York City for a number of years. With others in the field she enabled the founding of the American Dance Therapy Association in 1966 and became its first president.

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