(Washington, DC)—The Department of Mental Health will celebrate 65 years of dance movement therapy at Saint Elizabeths, the state psychiatric hospital, with national leaders in the dance therapy movement. The program will be Thursday, March 20, 2008, from 9:30 am to 11:30 am in the Chapel on the Hospital campus, 2700 Martin Luther King Avenue, SE.

Speakers are Judith Bunney, Sharon Chaiklin, and Diane Dulicai, founding members of the American Dance Therapy Association and students of Marion Chace, the seminal figure in the field of Dance Therapy. Karen Bradley will lead a movement choir, and dancers from the University of the District of Columbia also will perform.

Saint Elizabeths was a pioneer in music and dance therapy and helped launch a national movement using creative arts as a mechanism for healing and expression.  More than 70 dance therapists have been trained at Saint Elizabeths. 

“We celebrate not just Dance Therapy's 65 years, but also recognize the forward creative healing vision of Saint Elizabeths in supporting the development of this healing modality which has helped so many people,” said Dr. Patrick Canavan, Chief Executive Officer of the Hospital.

Marion Chace began work at the Hospital as a Red Cross Volunteer in 1943. She had been a concert dancer with the well-known Denishawn troupe, and operated a dance studio. She was invited by Hospital psychiatrists to bring her skills in dance and music to the patients. She was remarkable in her ability to reach and communicate through rhythmic interaction with regressed and non-verbal people who responded to her by expressing a range of emotions through dance and movement. This was in the era prior to the use of medication for psychiatric patients and the beginning of the development of group therapy as treatment.

As her national recognition grew, students came to study with her in the 1950s and 1960s and became the driving force in the organization of the American Dance Therapy Association. Marian Chace was named its first President in 1966. As the program at Saint Elizabeths grew, it paralleled the development of the dance therapy profession and recognition of its established standards for training, practice and credentialing. Dance therapists trained and employed at Saint Elizabeths are influential leaders in the profession.