Mr. Wiggles

Steffan Clemente, known as Mr. Wiggles, was born in 1965 in the Bronx and describes himself as a South Bronx Puerto Rican raised inside hip-hop culture from the 1970s. His artistic formation brought together graffiti writing, rocking, breaking, MCing, popping and beatmaking as interconnected practices rather than isolated specialties. By most accounts, he experimented with robot movement early on, encouraged by his sister Wanda, before moving into breaking—a formation documented in his faculty biography at Broadway Dance Center but without precise dates.

Under the name Mr. Wiggles, Clemente built a reputation through battles and became associated with historically important groups spanning both coasts: Rock Steady Crew and Zulu Nation in New York, and California's Electric Boogaloos. His affiliations also included the graffiti crew TC5. These connections locate his work across New York breaking and rocking as well as the West Coast funk styles—popping and boogaloo—historically developed through the Electric Boogaloos' lineage.

Clemente's visibility in early hip-hop cinema came through appearances in *Wild Style* (1983) and *Beat Street* (1984), films that brought breaking and hip-hop culture to wider audiences. His stage work expanded into theater through collaborations with choreographers including Graciela Daniele, Savion Glover, Bill Irwin, Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Anne Marie D'Angelo, with performances at venues such as the Apollo Theater and Kennedy Center. In 1992, the Rhythm Technicians and Rock Steady Crew received a Bessie Award for collective work. A year later, in 1993, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts awarded Clemente a Grants to Artists award in Dance. He performed in *Jam on the Groove*, a mid-1990s theatrical production that brought hip-hop dance into extended choreographic form.

Clemente's practice also encompasses music production. The Foundation for Contemporary Arts records a commission for him to create a piece for *September Songs*, a 1997 Kurt Weill tribute project. His Bandcamp page documents a substantial catalog of funk, electrofunk, hip-hop and break-oriented music made as a beatmaker and composer. The album *Mr Wiggles Breaks vol 2*, released in 2018, mixes edits and chop-ups with instruments played by Clemente, drawing on material created during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Teaching and documentation have become central to his later career. Broadway Dance Center identifies him as one of its early mainstream hip-hop faculty members, where he teaches movement vocabulary associated with popping and boogaloo—including the angular "King Tut" style. His YouTube channel preserves workshops, judge demonstrations, interviews, movement instruction and commentary on graffiti and hip-hop history. A still-active online training program and store, alongside documented workshop activity in 2025, show continued public teaching practice.