Liu Zhao is a young lighting designer active on stage nowadays in China and the resident lighting designer as well as stage designer of the National Ballet of China.

After graduated from The Central Academy of Drama, he joined the National Ballet of China as lighting designer and has participated in the lighting design and stage design of more than 20 works since 2010. In 2015, Liu Zhao was invited to be the lighting designer of the symphonic ballet "Four Seasons" choreographed by Ma Cong. He also acted as the lighting and stage designer in Orkan Dann's "In the Chrysanthemum Garden" in April, 2016, in which he put the idea of "stage vision of literary color" together with the choreography into the design and made the performance and the stage complement each other. In NBC's version of "La Bayadère", the visual presentation Liu Zhao has made was regarded the best ever by Natalia Makarova.

Except for ballet, there is a wide range of stage productions designed by Liu Zhao. In the past few years, he was invited to work with famous Chinese drama directors and choreographers as lighting designer in more than 20 plays, modern dances, and musical productions, such as Li Zhaohua, Wang Yuanyuan, Shang Jing, Yan Yongqi, Fang Xu, Krystian Lupa etc. and their works like Five Acts of Life Lao She's Short Stories, Martlet, The Miracle Cat, The Roco Kingdom, Death of a Playwright, The Life of Mine, Divorce, Mr. Ma and Son and Mo Fei etc.