Honoring History and Heritage: Roots for New Heights
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Honoring History and Heritage: Roots for New Heights Marian Chace Memorial Foundation Annual Lecture. American Dance Therapy Association 47th Annual Conference. Albuquerque, New Mexico; October 12, 2012 Judith Richardson Bunney
Published online: 9 April 2013 American Dance Therapy Association 2013
Judith Bunney, photo credit: Lisa Law Productions, Santa Fe, 2013
I am especially honored to present the Marian Chace Memorial Foundation Annual Lecture. Marian Chace was the first president of the ADTA, and I was fortunate to be trained by her and to work with her at Chestnut Lodge from 1957 to 1963. I was very lucky in my own lifetime to be privileged to know, to be taught by, and to work with a seminal thinker, an innovator, a creative genius, and a real person who impacted a burgeoning profession profoundly. Welcome to New Mexico—‘‘The Land Of Enchantment’’—celebrating 100 years of statehood. In 2012 our state capitol, Santa Fe, celebrated the 400th anniversary of its settlement, and Native American habitation of the region has been traced to 2000 BC. Many Pueblos continue to practice ancient healing rituals, such J. R. Bunney (&) Santa Fe, NM, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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as dance, which has been documented in native cultures from time immemorial. Our link to them is clear. Marian Chace began dance therapy1 at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC, in 1942; the dance therapy program at St. Elizabeths has operated continuously for the past 70 years. To put this figure into context, the ADTA is celebrating a relatively young 47 years, and I am celebrating 55 years as a practicing dance/ movement therapist. I chose the title of this lecture, Honoring History and Heritage, because this has been a pervasive topic in New Mexico for the past 2 years. Here in New Mexico, museums, symposia, lectures, and books have been exploring what the past has contributed to the present. This focus is reflected in my experience as well, having lived my entire adult life as a dance/movement therapist, from some of our earliest years to the present. Preparing for this lecture has been a little like an archeological dig, going back through some of the first ADTA publications: early monographs and the first journals that date from 1977 to 1978. This in itself was quite an accomplishment for an organization that was formalized only 11 years before. We have come a long way from some reports in the early literature referring to dance therapy as ‘‘adjunctive’’ therapy. With the establishment of graduate training programs requiring research theses, as well as credentialing standards for training and practice, we, as practitioners of mainstream therapy, have evolved into a profession worthy of respect. Looking back, we can see that our historical development moved ahead with deliberation, though not without conflict and debate. I have delved into these early journals, Volumes 1 and 2. They include conference overviews, with Volume 1 dealing with the 10th annual conference held in Asilomar, CA,
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