Karla Puno Garcia Steps on Stage as Director of Theatre Group Asia’s A Chorus Line

Emmy Award-winning choreographer Karla Puno Garcia debuts as director in Theatre Group Asia’s A Chorus Line.

With “One… singular sensation” from the musical A Chorus Line, you immediately imagine a full spectacle onstage with bright lights and a clone army of dancers in a tux and top hat kick dancing in perfect unison. The lyrics of the song extol the qualities of the star of the show whose mere presence captivates you.

The real star of A Chorus Line is the ensemble. The musical pulls back the curtain to reveal their individual lives. It examines and highlights the love that performers have for what they do, all to which celebrated Filipina-American dancer and choreographer Karla Puno Garcia fully relates.

Garcia is making her directorial debut in Theatre Group Asia’s A Chorus Line coming live in Manila in March 2026. It will bring together a Filipino cast chosen from all over the Philippines and New York. Fresh off winning an Emmy award for choreographing the Opening Number and the Lifetime Achievement Tribute performance at the 76th Annual Tony Awards, the star choreographer is the perfect person for the task.

“I’ve always respected the work ethic that it takes: the training, the discipline. It’s hard to have a life but you make it work because there’s nothing like performing live,” says Garcia of Theatre life. “And when you’re in an ensemble, when you’re in a show, you have so much built-in community.”

“I CAN DO THAT”

Garcia’s love for dancing was developed through years of intense training, soaking up different forms of dance and discovering how she instinctively moved.

“I had this video of me in my first dance recital when I was six years old; my first jazz dance was to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s ‘Good Vibrations.’ The camera kept following me at the end because I was doing the running man and I was just so into it. Like there was just something in me that I really loved, just like a raw natural groove, you know? I felt like it was in my bones. So that’s always been a part of me.”

She started with tap dance at age three. Growing up just outside the Washington DC area around a predominantly Filipino community, she did traditional Filipino dances with the Pilipino American Cultural Arts Society. Under Fran Peters, she trained in jazz, tap, and ballet, and competed nationally. Early on she saw that dancing was a career option. She saw graduates from her studio and family friends pursue a professional career on Broadway, so she set about pursuing her dream.

She went to New York to get her BFA in Dance in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and added modern dance to her vocabulary. After college, she got immersed in the underground hip-hop scene and discovered more ways of moving. All of her experiences in many different forms of dance have shaped her as a dance artist.

“WHAT I DID FOR LOVE”

Garcia has been a professional choreographer/dancer/teacher for 20 years. Her style is musically nuanced. She is highly technical with clean lines, sharp turns but far from sterile. Her dancing packs a punch. She moves with a natural, grounded groove, as if the music comes from her. Watching her dance makes you feel like she’s producing the music with her bones, her heartbeat is the beat, and you can’t help but groove along with her.

She got her first job as a dancer in a musical while she was a student in Tisch. More jobs followed, but not all projects lasted and some outright flopped. But she persisted through the grueling competition and difficult schedules to land a place in coveted projects. She performed in major musicals such as Hamilton on Broadway, where she danced for several years. This became like home for her, and is where she met her husband, David Guzman, who stars as Philip Hamilton. She also performed in West Side Story, Hot Feet, and Gigi on Broadway, national tours of Wicked and Addams Family, TV shows and specials like So You Think You Can Dance and the Tony Awards.

Choreography was always in the background as she gained experience choreographing for dance studios, events and specials in between jobs or during her days off. She hit a crossroad when opportunities came while she was doing Hamilton, and a transition to choreography was imminent. It was hard to leave a place that was like home. Since then, she has expanded her choreography credits to include Days of Wine and Roses on Broadway, Tick, Tick… BOOM! (Netflix & in Tokyo, Japan), Rent (Theatre Aspen), In the Heights (VA Rep, for which she received an Artsie Award for Best Choreography), the TV Series Raising Kanaan (STARZ Network), Jason Robert Brown’s The Connector, and Duncan Sheik’s Noir.

And now, the transition to directing is happening. “I feel like choreographers are directors in their own right. Especially with Theatre, you are co-piloting with the director. A lot of the time, you know, you are largely in charge of how the whole show moves in space, how the bodies are in space, and so, you know, I’ve been lucky enough to be around some of the best directors in the business.” She’s been an associate to Tony Award winner Sergio Trujillo, and choreographer for Andy Senor and Tony Award winner Darko Tresnjak.

Garcia looks back on her whole life as a student and a professional: “You’re realizing what’s important. Like are the lines and the extension important, or is the je ne sais quoi, or the acting of it? The way that you do your port de bras and move to the music. I feel like your taste just changes, right? Like, what we value when it comes to dance. I think that that’s what I had to realize coming into my own. And I’m still, you know, forming what that is.”

“MUSIC AND THE MIRROR”

Garcia will be taking on the dual role of director/choreographer in TGA’s A Chorus Line. This will be her first time to work on a musical with Filipino artists in the Philippines. “I’m so excited. I just feel like I’m putting on a show with my cousins, my family, because it just feels like home,” she shares. Growing up in the US, she was surrounded by a large Filipino community and came home to visit family in the Philippines every few years.

Despite the cultural familiarity, the process is no walk in the park. She went through hundreds of audition videos and travelled to various parts of the Philippines (auditions were held in Manila, Cebu, Bacolod, Davao, and New York), and held workshops with her baby KitaRose in tow before she finally settled on a cast.

“I’m drawn to a smart actor, a smart dancer, you know, someone who knows their body in space and who is going to be efficient in the process. That’s more valuable to me. And then someone who understands what they can bring, like, having that understanding of self, I think is really exciting and helpful,” says Garcia. “I’m really happy with who we get to create with.”

This is what will make this production special. A Chorus Line is celebrating 50 years, yet new artists get to shape it. We can’t wait to see how each one will breathe life and love into the music, words and choreography that audiences all over the world have loved.

“That’s very reflective of what an ensemble is too, you know, like that is, we all are an intersection. We’re coming from different backgrounds. We’re coming together to tell our own stories in the same book.”

By RHEA DUMDUM-BAUTISTA. Photographs by ARTU NEPOMUCENO. Beauty Editor JOYCE OREÑA. Fashion Editor DAVID MILAN. ​​Art Director: Jann Pascua. Beauty Writer and Associate: Bianca Custodio. Producer: Julian Rodriguez. Multimedia Artist: Mcaine Carlos. Media Channels Producer: Angelo Tantuico. Production Designer: Ohm David. Lighting Director: John Batalla. Makeup: Gery Penaso. Hair: John Al-Rey Valencia of Toni&Guy. Digital Technician: Choi Narciso. Lighting Technician: Odan Juan. Photography Assistant: Gwen Roxas. Videographer: Lynyrd Matias. Second Camera: Tara Reyes. Videography Assistant: Dome Plaza. Production Design Assistants: Chan Atilano, Cheska Cartativo, CJ Drice, Edgien Desoacido, Giemmuel Caldona, Laurenze Fajardo, and Raul Avila. Production Assistants: Irone John Caleda and Michael Jackson. Nails: Extraordinail. Special thanks to Inigo Elizalde Rugs and Mabolo Flower Shop. Shot on location at Samsung Performing Arts Theatre.