Sally RadellDance Program Director and Director of Undergraduate StudiesProfessor

• MA, choreography/Labanotation, The Ohio State University
• MFA, dance, Arizona State University

Sally Radell, Professor of Dance, holds an MA degree in choreography/Labanotation from The Ohio State University and an MFA degree in dance from Arizona State University.

She came to Emory in 1987 to found a degree program in dance. The substantial growth of the program and success of this endeavor is one of her proudest professional accomplishments.

Radell has been an active choreographer and performer for over twenty-five years, has received numerous choreographic commissions and artist grants, and is a published dance critic. She is passionate about the integration of somatics and ways to promote healthy body image in the dance classroom and has explored these interests in pedagogical and traditional scholarly formats.

Radell's teaching areas are modern and ballet technique, improvisation, composition, Labanotation, and somatics. She is a member of the International Association of Dance Medicine & Science and the National Dance Education Organization.

As an instructor, my job is to guide students into the material, listen carefully, know when to ask the critical questions, and to help them through the process of developing new constructs of understanding with reference to a specific topic or movement experience. This mind/body approach gives them a complete kinesthetic learning experience and trains them to dance, think, and problem solve all at once.

Movement is what we all have in common. Celebrating our movement capacities helps students shed the inhibitions they may have about using their bodies as expressive vehicles, and guides them along the path to becoming more fully functional beings.

As a teacher it is satisfying to work with students at all stages of their development. It allows me to develop a mentoring relationship with students, which often continues long after they have left Emory. It gives me great joy to encourage students to keep recognizing and believing in the inherent wisdom they have embodied in themselves. These experiences remind me of why I choose to pursue a life in teaching.

Sally Radell's primary research area over the past thirty-three years revolves around the concept of female body image. She has explored this concept in choreographic, pedagogical and traditional scholarly formats and recently has almost exclusively focused on body image using empirical research methodology in the dance classroom. Her research has been presented nationally and internationally in Taiwan, Spain, The Netherlands, Ireland, England, Switzerland, and Finland and has been published in the International Journal of Dance Medicine & Science, Research in Dance Education, Journal of Dance Education, and Perceptual and Motor Skills.