YouMedia @ Chicago Public Library

The Workshop:  Boogie shows you how to break dance & breaks down the history of dance within the musical context.

BIOGRAPHY:  Boogie McClarin (Chicago, IL) began her dance training at Whitney Young Magnet High School and the underground House parties of the late 1980’s. She continued her training under Laurie Sanda at Iowa State University and was strongly influenced by her conversations with prominent activists like Sonia Sanchez, Kwame Toure, Dr. Eric Michael Dyson and Dr. Cornell West. Returning to Chicago in 1998, Boogie has continued her formal dance training at the Joel Hall Dance Center, while cultivating her talent for hip-hop and urban street forms with the internationally renowned Rennie Harris and Puremovement (Philadelphia), The Electric Boogaloos (LosAngeles), Compagnie Kafig (Paris) and Phaze II (Chicago). Some of her other significant influences include participation in master classes by Anna Sokolow, David Dorfman, Ronald K. Brown, the Urban Bush Women and her study of the Brazilian martial art capoiera. Boogie has received recognition for her performance in “Cinderella: A Hip-Hop Tale of an Illegal Alien” (2001) and has choreographed for concerts, theater and stage in works ranging from a hip hop-rendition for Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, “The Bombitty of Errors” and concerts by rappers Ghost Face, Raekwon and Mos Def, to a reading by poet Nikki Giovanni.

She is currently on faculty at Old Town School of Folk Music.