A dancer’s eye.
A wider world.
I begin with movement, follow my questions, and pay attention to the people along the way.
Seven projects: in the studio, at school, in a hospital, in conversation, in a theater, in the field and with children in rural China. Each opens into a fuller case.
On stage · 2025
Solo film · 2:10
01 / 07 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
Moving together
Photos & film
02 / 07 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
Clinical setting
Interview · 3:25
03 / 07 Care
Joanna worked with the Wuhan Mental Health Center to explore how dance movement therapy could work in real clinical and mental-health settings. She listened to psychiatrists first, including Dr. Sheng, chief physician of psychiatry and psychology, then led a dance therapy practice with teenagers in short-term inpatient care.
15 teenagers · 11 showed significant improvement in their mental state
Conversations
2 interviews
04 / 07 Inquiry
Joanna took her questions about movement and mental health beyond the hospital: to a clinic director who cares for older adults in Wuhan, and to the president of an American university who looks after students.
Older adults in Wuhan · university students in the United States
Backstage interviews
4 interviews
05 / 07 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
Fieldwork · Enshi
Project film · 6:55
06 / 07 Research · Film
Joanna studied Enshi Nuo opera as a minority tradition and a way of shaping collective identity, interviewed its inheritors, and turned the research into a 15-minute documentary, articles and vlogs.
20,000+ article reads · 6,000+ vlog views
RICI Foundation · 2025
Photos
07 / 07 Community
Many children in rural China grow up while their parents work in distant cities. With the RICI Foundation's mental-health education program for these left-behind children, Joanna brought dance and art-therapy methods into the lessons: she designed a 15-hour curriculum, helped run the program and helped raise money for it.
15-hour curriculum · 1,000+ children in rural Hunan and Guangdong · about 58,000 yuan raised
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
Ballet · Chinese danceGrade 10
SkateboardingCRSA Intermediate Certification
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.
The rest of the CV: research, community projects, design and study. Open any line for the details.
An independent research review of about 4,000 words, “Review of Chinese Ethnic Dance Therapy”, written under the guidance of a PhD in music and dance studies at Minzu University of China. It traces how scholars have read the cultural symbols and expressive intent of contemporary Chinese ethnic dance, and the role these dances play in psychological healing.
Through interviews with participants in music therapy and a study of the secondary literature, Joanna examines how rhythm, collective movement, ritual and bodily memory may work as forms of psychological support, and compares the theories, methods and evaluation standards used across existing studies.
Humanities courses at Barnard College, with a research focus on collective ritual and refugee trauma.
Joanna studied how refugee communities use collective singing, dance and ritual to work through shared trauma; why embodied practices can rebuild belonging when language falls short, identities are disrupted or communities are broken apart; and how researchers can learn from culturally specific rituals without reducing them to generic therapeutic tools.
A team design for a human settlement inside a lunar crater at the Global Future Space Scholars Meet (GFSSM). As operations director, Joanna led the team to take the brief beyond architecture to what keeps a civilized society running: resource allocation, social organization, group psychology and ethical limits.
The team advanced to the national finals, and she received the Best Presenter award.
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.
She guided club members to understand and discuss how structural pressure, social culture and other factors affect women's rights.
As head of the Student Council's public relations department, Joanna organizes events, coordinates with partners and hosts major school events.
At ISA Day she managed the club exhibitions and designed wearable “energy badges” for school uniforms. More than 1,000 were sold, and Guangzhou ISA has since invited her to take part in designing its school emblem.
Monthly conferences and debates with the school's Model United Nations club.
At the 2026 North American MUN conference Joanna represented Mozambique: she researched African refugee issues, consulted with other delegations and completed a draft resolution, sharpening her quick thinking and her view of international relations.
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 storyFor 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 05 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 02 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 03 Care
Could dance movement therapy work in a real clinical setting? Joanna started by asking the people who work there.
She interviewed the center's vice president and four psychiatrists about professional boundaries, what patients need, and the limits of the treatments available today.
One of these conversations was filmed: Dr. Sheng, chief physician in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, on the mental health of older adults and on dance and arts therapy as an intervention for mental-health problems.
A two-week dance therapy practice with 15 teenagers in short-term inpatient care.
Joanna watched the patterns in each participant's movement, helped them perceive their own bodies, and guided them through improvisation and mirroring exercises.
When the project ended, the mental states of 11 of the 15 participants showed significant improvement.
15teenagers took part
11showed significant improvement
Case 04 Inquiry
Director Li Qiong of Meinian Health.
Joanna asked about the mental health of older adults, and how the clinic has been putting dance movement therapy into practice.
The president of Golden Gate University, in the United States.
Joanna asked about the mental health of American university students, and whether there are courses in dance movement therapy.
Case 06 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
The team's project film follows the research from the risk that Nuo opera will not be passed on, through a survey and interviews with inheritors and craftsmen, to a proposal for a game that uses digital modelling to carry Nuo's art and meaning to new audiences.
Case 07 Community
Mental-health education for children growing up while their parents work far from home.
The RICI Foundation in Guangdong runs a mental-health education program for left-behind children in rural China. Joanna joined it in the summer of 2025: she designed its dance curriculum and helped the foundation run the program.
Dance and art-therapy methods, brought into mental-health lessons.
Joanna designed and produced a 15-hour dance therapy curriculum for the program. It has reached more than 1,000 left-behind children in rural Hunan and Guangdong.
15hours of curriculum
1,000+children in rural Hunan and Guangdong
Raising money online for the program.
As RICI's ambassador for Tencent's 99 Giving Day, an annual online charity campaign, Joanna promoted the foundation's online fundraising and helped it raise around 58,000 yuan.
58,000yuan raised online, approximately
