Chicago dancer, choreographer and teacher of ballet.

Edna Louise McRae was a Chicago ballet teacher who received national recognition as a trainer of young dancers, and from the 1920s to the 1970s she helped make Chicago a major ballet center.

Born in Chicago in 1901, Edna and her sister Elma attended Schurz High School and the Chicago Normal School of Physical Education, where in both schools they were interested in dancing. While Elma went on to become a teacher of physical education, Edna decided on a career as a ballet dancer. She studied with, and danced in the companies of, such prominent Chicago teachers as Andreas Pavley, Serge Oukrainsky and Adolph Bolm. She also studied ballet in New York, London and Paris, and like many dancers and teachers of her time, was trained in other forms such as Spanish and tap.

McRae opened her own Chicago school in 1925, and until her retirement from regular teaching in 1964, her school was one of the places where touring dancers would often take classes when they were appearing locally. She also taught at the Pavley and Oukrainsky Ballet School of Chicago, the Adolph Bohm School of the Dance, and the Perry-Mansfield Camp in Colorado. She was choreographer for the "Enchanted Island" Theatre at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago in 1933, the Chicago Park District, and the initial season of the Lyric Opera Company.

In 1962 McRae opened a new studio with teacher Keith Allison, but poor health caused McRae to retire in 1964. However, she continued to devote herself to special projects in the world of dance until she suffered a heart attack in 1974. Among other activities, she supervised the original Joffrey Apprentice Program in New York in 1965, and was on the faculties at the Juilliard School in New York in 1969 and the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in 1973. One of her most memorable engagements was a yearly position, 1965 to 1972, as associate director in charge of the children for the "The Nutcracker" ballet, Ruth Page's production presented by The Chicago Tribune

McRae received a number of awards and honors. She became an honorary member of the Chicago National Association of Dance Masters in 1963, and received a plaque from that organization in 1982 for her outstanding achievement in the teaching of dance. In 1974 the Cliff Dwellers presented her with a medal for her distinguished service to the Arts in Chicago, and in 1986 the Ellis-DuBoulay School of Ballet established the Edna McRae Scholarships. The Chicago Dance Arts Association gave her the Ruth Page Award in 1987, and Schurz High School elected her to its "Hall of Fame" in 1990.

As a teacher, Edna McRae was a stern disciplinarian with high standards of performance, and she sent many young people on to careers on the stage or in television. Her dance training methods, emphasizing fundamentals, was firm and demanding; some of her students eventually would open dance schools of their own. After a long life of learning and teaching, Edna McRae died one week short of her 89th birthday in 1990.