Family Day | Let Loose

About the Event

Celebrate the movements of our bodies and the political movements in Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón.

Designed for children under 12 and their grown-ups, MCA Family Days invite our youngest visitors to be the museum’s artists, thinkers, and collaborators.

About the Artists

Chicago Dance Crash amplifies diverse artistic voices that collide within the intersection of street dance, concert dance, and physical theater, allowing for new avenues of discovery and innovation in Chicago and on the global stage. The company’s fusion-style works and performing ensemble embody their dedication to being an accessible and innovative dance company, creating intensely physical, authentic, and narrative-driven art.

Founded in 2002 and based in the heart of Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, Crash is an incubator for the creation of street dance and evening-length physical theater productions, featuring artists rooted in dance forms such as Hip Hop, House, Chicago Footwork, Breaking, Popping, Krump, Contemporary, Acrobatics, and more. They center the pioneers and practitioners of Chicago’s street dance scene across all programming, including regular performances, touring, and K–12 arts outreach, ensuring these art forms remain at the forefront of the city’s evolving dance landscape. Our programs are built to be culturally competent and inclusive to all, offering meaningful access to the arts and responsive artist development.

Vanessa Viruet, a Chicago-based artist of Puerto Rican descent, creates large-scale works delving into complex histories rooted in textiles, including identity, heritage, gender, and class. She’s had solo and group exhibitions at venues including New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art in Indiana, the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, Chicago’s Roots and Culture and Circle Contemporary, Chicago Art Department, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Viruet has also exhibited in conjunction with Slow and Low Lowrider Festival and Chicago Textiles Week. She was featured in Surface Design Magazine. Residencies include ACRE and the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.

Viruet holds a BFA and an MA in Teaching from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Viruet has over a decade of experience as an art instructor in Chicago Public Schools. She currently lectures in Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and mentors students in the Low Residency MFA program. Someday she aspires to establish a scholarship for artists of color.

La Escuelita Bombera de Corazón, founded in November 2009 by Ivelisse “Bombera de Corazón” Díaz, is an Afro-Puerto Rican diasporic performing arts school rooted in the tradition of Bomba. La Escuelita offers a comprehensive curriculum of basic, intermediate, and advanced courses, all grounded in Bomba’s rhythmic structure and cultural context.