More than words: Professor Jingqiu Guan shares how movement can bridge language gaps

This talk was part of the 2025 TedxDuke conference: Eye of the Beholder. Speakers presented ideas worth sharing from within our Duke and Durham community, including 12 students, alumni, and residents. 

This year’s theme focused on stories from unique perspectives that, much like a painting, can shift based on the angle one views them. The short talks were planned to teach, inspire, and captivate audiences.

TEDxDuke is a program that draws some of Duke University’s and Durham’s most curious, creative, and progressive thinkers together for intellectual discussion. The only difference—it’s entirely student-run! The event is inspired by the visionaries that come to share their unique stories and valuable perspectives. It serves as a unique platform to establish positive dialogue, create unexpected connections, and inspire powerful momentum.

Watch the full video:

From the video description:

What if the deepest conversations we need to have can’t be spoken? In this mesmerizing talk, Duke University Professor of the Practice of Dance Jingqiu Guan reveals how movement can bridge gaps that language cannot—between cultures, generations, and even family members. 

Sharing her personal story, she recounts how dance became the medium through which she finally connected with her emotionally distant father, transcending cultural norms that discouraged open displays of affection. Blending scholarship, storytelling, and a live performance, she shows how dance can offer a shared language when words are too fragile—or too foreign—to carry the weight of love. 

Originally from Chengdu, China, Jingqiu Guan is a filmmaker, choreographer, scholar, and dancer. She is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in Duke University’s Dance Program. 

Her work explores cultural identities, diasporic experiences, motherhood, racial and disability justice through multimedia dance performance and film, centering the voices of women, immigrants, people of color, and people with disabilities. Her dance films and documentaries have been presented internationally, earning awards at screendance festivals across the US, UK, India, Norway, Spain, Austria, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Mexico, China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan. 

Jingqiu is currently developing a multimedia dance performance inspired by migration stories connected to trains and railroads. She holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA, an MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa, and an Ed.M from Harvard. 

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.