A dancer’s eye.
A wider world.
I begin with movement, follow my questions, and pay attention to the people along the way.
Three projects: one in the studio, one in a theater, one at school. Each opens into a fuller case.
On stage · 2025
Solo film · 2:10
01 / 03 Dance
Joanna has danced since primary school, across ballet, jazz, modern, Chinese dance, stage performance and dance gymnastics. Ballet and Chinese dance are the two she has taken to Grade 10.
Grand Gold Award, Taoli Cup Dance Art General Performance Competition: 2024 and 2025
Backstage interviews
4 interviews
02 / 03 Film
For six months Joanna filmed the daily work of performers and theater staff, so that audiences could see what artists' lives look like behind the scenes. She also made Stories of Dancers, a micro-documentary about the pressures dancers live with.
100,000+ views across the RedNote vlog series
Moving together
Photos & film
03 / 03 Community
Joanna founded the ISA Dance Therapy Club to turn everyday dance practice into something teachers, parents and students could share as a mental-health practice. She then took the idea beyond the school with a workshop for educators.
3 school mental-health events · 150+ participants · 30+ educators at the workshop
Joanna Xiao is a student at ISA Wenhua Wuhan High School. She has danced since primary school, and her work moves between the studio, the camera and the library.
She has filmed backstage at The Han Show Theatre, done fieldwork on the Nuo theater of Enshi, and is writing a review of research on Chinese ethnic dance and psychological support. At school she founded a dance therapy club and runs public relations for the Student Council. Off stage, she skateboards.
ISA Wenhua Wuhan High SchoolSep 2024 – present
AP: Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Calculus BC, Chemistry, Psychology, Biology, Business with Personal Finance, Statistics
IGCSE: Chinese, Further Mathematics, Science
BalletGrade 10
Chinese danceGrade 10
Also studied: jazz, modern, stage performance, dance gymnastics
IELTS7
SkateboardingCRSA Intermediate
A dance workshop for older adults changed what Joanna looks for when people move, and the change came up again in a design project.
At a community center for older adults there were no mirrors, and no single correct height for a raised arm.
Some people found the beat at once; others moved in a small range. One woman seldom lifted her arms above her chest and stayed back in her chair. Her wrists still turned with the music from start to finish.
Joanna almost walked over to ask her to lift her arms higher and follow along.
She didn't. Only later did she see where the instruction had come from: the measure she used on herself in the studio mirror, where a movement counts only once it looks complete.
For the next workshop, she broke apart movements that had only one way to be completed.
Each one counted as part of the dance. Instead of looking for who moved like her, she began to notice how each person was already moving.
In a team project designing a smart cane, the first plan was a sound alert for unsteady steps.
Joanna proposed a gentle vibration in the handle. It is still a warning, but only the person holding the cane feels it, so no one nearby becomes an audience. The team adopted the change.
Plan A: everyone nearby hears the alert.
Research, community projects, design and ideas. Open any line for the details.
Fieldwork on Enshi Nuo opera as a minority cultural tradition and a form of collective identity: the Tujia customs, religious philosophy and group psychology behind the performance. It produced a 15-minute documentary, articles and vlogs.
An independent research review of about 4,000 words, written under the guidance of a PhD in music and dance studies at Minzu University of China. It looks at how rhythm, collective movement, ritual and bodily memory are discussed as forms of psychological support, and compares the theories, methods and evaluation standards used across existing studies. Interviews with participants in music therapy are part of the work.
A two-week project with the Wuhan Mental Health Center exploring how dance movement therapy could work in real clinical and mental-health settings. Joanna interviewed the center's vice president and four psychiatrists about professional boundaries, patients' needs and the limits of current treatment. She then led a dance therapy practice with 15 teenagers in short-term inpatient care: observing their movement patterns, helping them perceive their own bodies, and guiding improvisation and mirroring. After the project, the mental states of 11 participants showed significant improvement.
Working with the RICI Foundation to bring dance and art-therapy methods into mental-health education for rural left-behind children, Joanna designed and produced a 15-hour dance therapy curriculum that has benefited more than 1,000 children in rural Hunan and Guangdong. As RICI's ambassador for Tencent 99 Giving Day, she promoted its online charity campaign, which raised around 58,000 yuan in donations.
As vice president, Joanna organized a workshop on the workplace discrimination, sexual harassment and legal barriers faced by women workers and artists in Hubei. A civil-rights lawyer joined as a regular guest to explain why such cases are hard to defend under existing law.
A team design for a human settlement in a lunar crater at the Global Future Space Scholars Meet. As operations director, Joanna pushed the brief beyond architecture to what keeps a society running: resource allocation, social organization, group psychology and ethical limits. The team reached the national finals, and she received the Best Presenter award.
As head of the Student Council's public relations department, Joanna ran the club exhibitions at ISA Day and designed wearable “energy badges” for school uniforms. More than 1,000 were sold. Guangzhou ISA has since invited her to take part in designing its school emblem.
On a team project, Joanna proposed replacing a sound alert with a vibration in the handle, so the warning reaches only the person holding the cane.
Read it in the storyHumanities courses in New York, focused on how refugee communities use collective singing, dance and ritual to work through shared trauma, and on how researchers can learn from culturally specific rituals without reducing them to generic therapeutic tools.
Monthly conferences and debates with the school club, then a 2026 North American conference as the delegate for Mozambique: researching African refugee issues, negotiating with other delegations and completing a draft resolution.
For collaborations, screenings or questions about her work.
Case 01 Dance
Joanna started dancing in primary school and has trained across six styles.
Ballet and Chinese dance are the two she has taken to Grade 10. The other four are part of her training history.
Grand Gold Award at the Taoli Cup Dance Art General Performance Competition, in 2024 and again in 2025.
In 2025 she danced Zui Hua Yin, a Chinese dance solo, in the Junior Group B category.
Ling (灵), a Dai dance solo. Hong Kong Xiqu Centre, February 2025.
Case 02 Film
A RedNote vlog series about the daily work of the theater's performers and staff.
The aim was to let the public see the hardships of artists' lives behind the scenes, beyond the finished show.
100,000+views across the vlog series
Stories of Dancers is a micro-documentary about dancers' lives under four kinds of pressure.
The film asks for more attention to artists' rights, and has been praised by viewers on Bilibili and other social platforms.
Backstage, Joanna talked with the people who make the show run: performers in the wardrobe room and the crew at the lighting desk.
Case 03 Community
The ISA Dance Therapy Club turns everyday dance training into a mental-health practice.
Joanna founded the club in September 2024 and leads its members. The idea is a practice that teachers, parents and students can do together, not one that only trained dancers can join.
Three school mental-health events, using ribbon writing and dance movement to release pressure.
150+participants across the three events
The PLC Dance & Arts Therapy Workshop, organized with the ISA Parent-Teacher Association.
Joanna invited educators from across China to explore how movement-based practices might support adolescent mental well-being.
30+educators invited
Case 04 Research · Film
What keeps an old ritual theater meaningful to the people who perform it today?
Joanna studied Enshi Nuo opera as a minority cultural tradition and as a form of collective identity: the Tujia customs, religious philosophy and group psychology behind the performance.
She interviewed inheritors of the tradition.
The interviews asked why a traditional performance can still offer emotional grounding, identity and community in contemporary life.
The research became a 15-minute short documentary, plus articles and vlogs on social media.
20,000+article reads
6,000+vlog views
