J.J. (Jingqiu) Guan is an award-winning filmmaker, choreographer, scholar, and dancer originally from Chengdu, China. She is an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Dance at Duke University. Working across performance, dance film, and documentary, Guan creates interdisciplinary works that engage social issues, cultural memory, and embodied storytelling. Centering the voices and experiences of women, immigrants, people of color, and people with disabilities, her work explores cultural identity, motherhood, and questions of racial and disability justice.
Guan’s dance films and documentaries have screened internationally at festivals across the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Norway, Spain, Austria, Greece, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Mexico, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan. Her feature-length dance documentary Mama Dancers has won multiple awards in dance film festivals and is currently distributed on Amazon. Her dance film First Dance 2.0 (2023) was a winner at the Dance in Focus Film Festival: Reflections and was presented at the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles. The Weight of Sugar (2021) received the Outstanding Direction Award from Manifest Dance-Film Festival in India and the Best Dance Film Award from Black Lives Rising Dance Film Festival. Her dance documentary Family Portrait (2019) won the Chinese Screendance Maker Award at Jumping Frames International Video Dance Festival, the Best Student Film Award from San Francisco Dance Film Festival, and the Grand Jury Award from Chicago’s In Motion Dance Film Festival.
In addition to creating work for screen and stage, Guan collaborates with leading dance and theater artists to design visual projections for live performances presented at venues including the Academy Museum of Motion Picture, the Apollo Theater, Brooklyn Museum, with the LA Philharmonic, the Skirball Cultural Center, and universities nationwide.
As a scholar, Guan has published in Dance Chronicle, International Journal of Screendance Studies, Journal of Intercultural Studies, The Journal of Media Practice, Arts, and Education, and contributed to a chapter in the forthcoming book series Women’s Innovation in Theater, Dance and Performance. She holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA, an MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa, an Ed.M from Harvard University, and a BA in Economics and French from Saint Mary’s College.
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