(6 Mar) Pedagogical Signatures of Resilience: Fostering Multifaceted Dispositions in the Performing Arts for Future Creative Economies

How can we reimagine resilience?

This roundtable brings together veteran artist-educators from music, dance, and theatre to explore how resilience is cultivated as a multifaceted pedagogical disposition in the performing arts. Participants will share lived experiences, discuss contemporary teaching approaches, and examine learning challenges in navigating ambiguity, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Drawing on insights from performance practices, the session will highlight how resilience has been intentionally fostered in our higher education curricula, and how these practices can extend beyond the classroom to benefit learners, educators, and society at large.

We invite dialogue, collaboration, and reflection on how the performing arts can help students in all majors recognise multiple employment possibilities, to inspire resilient, creative communities for the future.

The roundtable will include performances and demonstrations by music, dance and theatre students from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Singapore. A closing work, titled Here, There & Fly Where?, reimagines flight attendants through various Afro-dance styles with contemporary and street elements. 

• Student Performers: Shavaun Toh (Cellist, School of Music); Joelle Wong Jing Yee and Muhammad Razin Nurulhaq Bin Sirhan (School of Theatre); Muhammad Shazlan bin Roslan (Choreographer, School of Dance); Siti Nur-Afiqah Binte Azli, Siti Nur-Atiqah Binte Azli, Chandrasekaran Richard Solomon, Kendra Alexa Kurniawan, Rabano Rhailly Espiritu, Wan Mohamed Qhairunnas Bin Wan Mohamed Ramdan (School of Dance), Elysia Zhang Mingjia (School of Dance)

Speakers

Lena Ching

Lena Ching is an established pianist and educator in Singapore with close to 40 years of teaching experience. She specialises in nurturing gifted and high-ability learners and music professionals, and draws on her conservatory and music psychology training to support cross-sector collaborations.

Rebecca Kan

Rebecca works across the visual and performing arts on research in professional education, signature pedagogies, and the space in-between. She is co-editor of Teaching and Learning the Arts in Higher Education with Technology (2021) and Signature Pedagogies for Professions in Arts and Design (2025)

Andrew James Mowatt

Andrew James Mowatt is a theatre educator and practitioner committed to empowering emerging artists through rigorous training and creative collaboration. He champions inclusive practice and imaginative risk-taking, bridging theory and craft to nurture reflective storytellers.

Gillian Tan

Gillian Tan is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader (Dance) at NAFA, UAS with a MFA in Choreography at Purchase College, Conservatory of Dance (New York). Her pedagogical work was published in Springer’s Teaching and Learning the Arts in Higher Education with Technology (2021).