Mrs. Stoney was originally a professional ballet dancer. She gave up performing because of what she felt was a lack of communication between the dancer and the audience. After college and graduate school in painting and art history, she began studying modern dance.

Teaching dance in several private New England girls' schools, Mrs. Stoney realized the possibilities of what she termed "the expression of, feeling through movement." She then took "the course in dance therapy, Miss Chace's summer session at the Turtle Bay Music School in New York.

At Metropolitan State, Mrs. Stoney helps children to express themselves in all of the creative arts. She places herself somewhere between a teacher and a therapist. "A teacher hangs up her subject with her coat when she comes into the room," Mrs. Stoney said. "She always keeps sight of that subject. But she's mainly working with disturbed children."

Forms of dance therapy are used throughout the Boston area--the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, McLean Hospital, the South Shore Mental Health Clinic in Quincy, and in the special education program for exceptional children in the Newton schools.

Dance therapy recognizes the disturbed person's need to express himself and his frequent inability to do so verbally. It is such a promising form of therapy because it draws on the natural ability to move the body in response to emotions.

During one dance therapy session, a young man suddenly smiled and said, "If I could have kept moving, I should not have had to be sick.