Education
She studied modern dance and choreography with Ted Shawn and Ruth Saint Denis at the Denishawn School of Dance and started work as a dance performer.
She studied modern dance and choreography with Ted Shawn and Ruth Saint Denis at the Denishawn School of Dance and started work as a dance performer.
However she believed that the body and mind are interrelated, and influenced by the work of Carl Jung. She began to teach in Washington District of Columbia and noticed some of her students were more interested in the expression of emotions than in dance technique and began to emphasize this in her classes. 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 included body active, symbolism, therapeutic movement relationship, and rhythmic group activity.
Eventually she joined the staff at Saint Elizabeth’s hospital in southeast Washington District of Columbia 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/body movement.
She worked for a number of years with patients at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Doctor of Medicine. In the 1960s she founded a training program for dance therapists New New York In 1966 she founded the American Dance Therapy Association and became its first president