Xiao Liu is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. She holds a BA in Chinese Language and Literature and MAs in Comparative Literature, before entering the field of Performance Studies at NYU.

Her research and creative practice focus on contemporary performance in South China, with particular attention to dance, labor mobility, migration, and embodied forms of collective artistic practice. Her doctoral project develops the concept of mou to examine how movement operates as both artistic practice and social strategy within conditions of urban transformation in Guangzhou.

Alongside her academic research, Liu is a theatre director and founding member of the interdisciplinary artistic research collective Multi-D Working Group, producing practice-based projects across performance, writing, and site-specific experimentation.

Why PS @ NYU?

I came to Performance Studies through both literary studies and theatre practice. While trained in these two adjacent fields, I found that performance offered a way to connect embodied experience, social change, and cultural theory, allowing me to bring together ideas and practices that do not usually belong together. In this way, Performance Studies also transformed how I write and create.

Before entering the field, my notebook was mostly a private space for solitary ideas and imagined creations. After studying Performance Studies, I began to see writing as something shaped by real encounters. Field notes, dialogue, overheard conversations, movement experiments, and unfinished thoughts from others now often become part of both my performances and academic writing.