Karla Puno Garcia is a Jazz and Contemporary dancer and choreographer who was a top 7 female finalist on the fifth season of So You Think You Can Dance. Currently a swing in the smash-hit Broadway musical Hamilton, she was selected to present at the 2018 DANCEBREAK Showcase as one of 6 ‘Broadway-bound choreographers’. She has performed in numerous Broadway shows including Gigi, Hot Feet and West Side Story, and was part of the national tours of The Addams Family and Wicked. She has also toured Australia for Rasta Thomas’ Bad Boys of Dance as a soloist, and performed for VH1 Divas Live and as a principle dancer on Season 2 of Smash on NBC. She has also choreographed hit music videos for The Knocks, Kindness and Mandy Gonzales.
Born in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Garcia got her first role in Brothers of the Knight at the Kennedy Center alongside James Ingram and Debbie Allen when she was 12 years old. She moved to the Big Apple to continue her career, completing a BFA in dance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts on scholarship. Garcia madeher Broadway debut in Hot Feet, before landing roles in the Broadway revivials of Gigi and West Side Story.
Garcia’s many choreographic credits including 1001 Nights and A Day at the Prospect Theater Company and In The Heights, for which she won the Richmond Theatre Critics Best Choreography Award.