Dance Therapy

"Medicine: Dance Therapy" uses imagery to effectively show the effects and specific examples of dance therapy at St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the mental ill in Washington, B.C. Through situations with schizophrenics a nationally known dance therapist, Marian Chaze, allows patients to release their anger and come back to reality through dance movement. Even men with tremors, years of silence, and a minds full of voices are able to escape the chains of their illness to be positively effected by the music and the dance movements that Chaze offers.
Marian Chaze, 62, was born in Rhode Island and grew up in Washington. She began working with young children who had learning disabilites and her psychiatric work branched out from there. Soon enough Ms. Chaze became the United State's first dance therapist at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. She has trained most of the dance therapists that exist in the United States today and she is the leader of drama therapy as well.
This article written in Time Magazine is an excellent example of how effect dance and drama therapy can be, but it also gives an insight to the history of dance therapy as well. Although this therapy is not as common as others it has come a long way in the short amount of time that it has been in existence. Ms. Chaze started working with children in the mid 1930s which was one of the first times that the United States had heard of the use of dance therapy and now in 2010 it has become a common form of treatment in hospitals across the country.