Finding Joy in Dance and STEM

Eddie McClary could use a nap.

Before graduating from the University of Washington in June, McClary was juggling studio time for dance classes with lab time for biochemistry courses, rehearsing for a dance concert, choreographing a musical theater production, volunteering in a faculty research lab, and baking bread on weekends at a Seattle bakery.  

“It’s been incredibly busy and tiring at times, sometimes too much, but nothing that I haven’t put on myself,” says McClary, who earned a BA in dance, a BS in biochemistry, and a minor in chemistry, all in the College of Arts & Sciences. “I feel like my experience at the UW has been incredibly well-rounded. I am going into graduation feeling so fulfilled.”

McClary has always been interested in both STEM and dance. Experiencing the COVID pandemic as a high school student, he became particularly interested in pharmaceutical research and vaccine development, so he chose to major in biochemistry in the UW Department of Chemistry.

But having danced all his life, starting with ballet classes at age two, McClary also enrolled in UW dance courses for the sheer pleasure of it. He had no plans to double major in dance, but that changed when a friend encouraged him to audition for UW Dance Presents, a Department of Dance concert.

“I hadn’t performed dance since I was thirteen,” McClary says. “I was doing musical theater in high school but not dance performance.” Still, he auditioned. When Professor Alana Isiguen chose him to perform in a piece she was choreographing, he had an epiphany.

“I realized I didn’t see a future where I’m not dancing as much as I possibly can, at least while I’m young and have that ability,” he says. “I realized I should be a dance major.”

McClary performed in UW Dance Presents again the following year, this time in a piece choreographed by professors Rachael Lincoln and Jen Salk. Lincoln choreographed a solo for McClary to open the piece, which stands out as one of his favorite UW memories.

“That moment of being given a role so specific to me, so tailored to my style of movement, was really special,” he says. He felt similarly moved when he was chosen for a Department of Dance Scholarship last spring.  “It was another moment of realizing that the work I’m putting in is being recognized.”

Even as a dance major, McClary hadn’t considered creating choreography — until his longtime boyfriend Laurence Yu-Hyun Wulfe (BA, Drama Design, 2026) convinced him to partner on the musical Pippin, with Wulfe as director and McClary as choreographer. (McClary and Wulfe first met while performing musical theater with Village Theater’s KIDSTAGE.) That production of Pippin was presented in 2024 by Stage Notes, the UW’s student-run musical theatre club.

Pippin was originally choreographed by the great Bob Fosse. McClary kept one section of Fosse’s choreography –- a piece called Manson Trio –- and used that as inspiration to inform the rest. The cast for the Stage Notes production was huge, with up to 26 people on stage, but only six were experienced dancers. Rather than frustrating McClary, that energized him.

“My big goal was to help people find the joy in dance, as I do,” he says. “I had multiple cast members come up to me after that show and say, ‘I didn’t think I could dance and you showed me that I could.’ That meant a lot.”

This spring, McClary choreographed another Stage Notes musical, Cabaret. “My choreography process was more streamlined this time,” he says. “I had a better understanding of how formations work, how partnering works, and what it would look like on the stage. And the most people on stage at one time in Cabaret is 12. Significantly easier!”

While dance became more central to McClary’s UW experience than anticipated, his interest in biochemistry never waned. To hear him describe learning about the glycolysis pathway in a biochemistry class, it’s with the same enthusiasm as learning new steps in a dance class.

“Biochemistry is fascinating to me,” he says. “It’s fascinating as well to see the things we don’t know. Sometimes in class the professor will say, ‘This pathway does this, but we don’t know how yet. We’re still figuring it out.’  I like that it’s a field where it still feels like there is so much work to be done.”

Coming into the UW, McClary was interested in medical research, particularly the development of vaccines and medications to address health problems. In his senior year, he finally found time to work in a faculty lab. He’s currently part of the Kelly lab in the School of Pharmacy, where he is creating a reliable inventory of the many cryo vials (vials that can be deep frozen) of donated cells.

McClary hopes to find work in a research lab after graduation, but he also plans to perform professionally in musical theater. He’s already worked as a swing — a dance understudy — for a professional production of Brigadoon at Village Theater, which required learning the roles of all four male dancers and filling in for them on six separate occasions.

Pursuing both dance and lab work may be difficult, but it will be a familiar challenge for McClary. After all, he’s been balancing dance and STEM at the UW for years.

“I’ve found so much happiness in going to a two-hour dance class and being exhausted at the end of it, and then having a two-hour biochem class, and then a musical theater rehearsal,” he says. “These worlds have been so intrinsically linked in my schedule that they are intrinsically linked within me. I don’t think my UW experience would have felt whole without all three components: dance, musical theater, and STEM.”