About
Gaby is a performer, choreographer and dance educator.
Her theatre credits include: Dear Evan Hansen (Pangdemonium); Macbeth (Singapore Repertory Theatre); Cabaret (Sing’Theatre). Her choreographic works include: Title of Show (Sing’Theatre); Ride the Cyclone (Lasalle College of the Arts); and various corporate events for companies such as Hyatt Hotel Group and Chopard.
With a teaching career spanning nearly 10 years at institutions such as LASALLE College of the Arts, Gaby specialises in musical theatre jazz and tap, tailoring her classes to meet each student where they are. Her classes are a safe space to take risks, make mistakes, and ultimately, fall in love with the process.
Making It Make Sense: Musical theatre students’ experiences of dance self-efficacy in Singapore
Dance training within musical theatre education places complex demands on students. Alongside developing technical proficiency, they must learn to interpret choreography, connect movement to storytelling, and perform with confidence.
However, technical training alone may not ensure that students feel capable of meeting these demands. What might a classroom look like when pedagogy is centred on students’ sense of capability? This study explores musical theatre students’ experiences of dance self-efficacy in ballet and jazz classes within a bachelor’s degree programme in Singapore.
This study adopted a constructivist, phenomenological methodology, engaging semi-structured interviews with five musical theatre students. The thesis investigates how students make sense of their abilities, how teaching practices influence their beliefs, and which classroom experiences constrain their development. The findings indicate that dance self-efficacy is embodied, relational and performative, involving more than technical ability or repeated experiences of success.
Three themes emerged in relation to how students made sense of dance self-efficacy: making the body knowable, making risk survivable, and making technique valuable. Across the intersecting influences of teachers, peers and the self, students felt supported in their development when movement was clearly translated, psychological safety was cultivated, and technique was connected to musical theatre performance.
The study contributes student-centred insight to Singaporean tertiary arts education and proposes a possible hybridisation of pedagogical approaches that combines technical guidance with autonomy, creativity and embodied understanding.
Professional practice
My creative and research practice is grounded in the belief that dance education should cultivate embodied knowledge, self-efficacy and self-expression alongside technical excellence.
I am deeply invested in the how and why of musical theatre education, seeking to create learning environments where students come to recognise their own capabilities through play and exploration.
Regina Chua
Julian Low
