Randi Sloan has taught in and chaired the dance department at The Dalton School in NYC for the past 25 years. She has fostered a program that is known as a destination for ‘thinking dancers.’ The program focuses on developing kinesthetic awareness, problem solving, creative exploration, and nonlinear thought.
Randi defines her role as a collaborator and resource and designs the curriculum so that students take ownership of their choreography. Students draw upon dance from diverse traditional and contemporary cultures. In addition to the core modern dance curriculum, the dance program at the Dalton School incorporates ballet, jazz, African dance, hip-hop, yoga, tai chi, capoeira, Greek, and Native American Dance. Creative movement is seen as the basic essential mode of instruction, rather than as a vehicle for performance. Student choreography is presented at the school’s annual dance concert. The students decide on a group common theme (for example; visual art, poetry, text, dreams, containers, fairy tales) that serves to unify the group and provide a structure for each student’s individual dance. Through the year-long creative process, students evolve as choreographers, clarifying their thinking about movement as art.
In addition to teaching at Dalton, Ms. Sloan is an adjunct professor at New York University in the Steinhardt School of Dance Education. She has served as consultant and teacher of dance pedagogy for the New York City Department of Education. In prior years, Randi Sloan taught as guest artist in residence at Oakland University, Wayne State University and Milan.