Above all the dance therapy sessions make patients feel that they are accomplishing something. "The main thing is that you can't do anything wrong," one therapist said.

With progress in these areas, a patient becomes more ready to work in a group.

Out of a woman's dance group at St. Elizabeth's grew a hospital-wide musical production. "St. Elizabeth's Hotel," a satire on hospital life. For the show, the patients parodied a number of songs, including "You're Just in Love." They wrote.

I hear voices and there's no one there,

I see visions floating in the air,

I have nightmares in the daylight glare,

I wonder why, I wonder why,

Schizophrenia is new to me,

I'm a double personality,

Doctors say one's enough for me,

I wonder why, I wonder why. . . .

A year later, in 1955, the dance group directed the writing and producing of a pageant about the life of Dorthea Lynde Dix. Miss Dix, famous for her campaigns to improve treatment of the mentally ill, was instrumental in the federal government's founding of St. Elizabeth's a century before.

Miss Chace was instrumental in the development of techniques of dance therapy. Recently institutionalized in the form of the American Dance Therapy Association, dance therapy is now used throughout the country. But each therapist, usually a dancer herself, has individualized methods of dealing with a group of the mentally ill.

The techniques of dance therapy are also used to establish communication with physically handicapped and mentally retarded children and adults.

Under a grant from the Radcliffe Institute, Griselda W. Stoney, a dance therapist, works in the children's unit of the Metropolitan State Hospital in Boston.