BURBANK —

The world of JoJo Siwa, the child star who became a pop star who became a TV star, is even smaller than it appears onscreen.

Her homebase, Studio Siwa, is perched on an indiscreet corner in Burbank, California. Next door to a gun store, it’s a bare, black dance studio with a green room that smells like sweaty feet. Curious passersby can easily squint through the tinted windows to catch Siwa, at work in her unglamorous fishbowl.

Siwa holed up there recently with her dancers and team to prepare for a European tour. The other day, while she was scrolling through her phone to play the new track, “I’m Still Dancing,” a survivor’s anthem in the vein of Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing,” something creaked in the cavernous studio.

“We have a ghost,” she said, as her four backup dancers giggled politely. “Her name’s Veronica.”

Seconds later, Siwa was back to performing a song about her haters, wearing a homemade jersey bedazzled with her own name.

CNN

Siwa has teetered between niche fame and lucrative stardom for more than half her young life. As a child, she bore the brunt of coachzilla Abby Lee Miller’s rage on “Dance Moms” before abandoning reality TV for the orange pastures of Nickelodeon, presiding over an extremely successful merchandising empire. At 17, at the peak of her toy-selling earnings, she came out as queer in a TikTok set to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” She appeared on “The Masked Singer” and the endurance competition show “Special Forces.” Last year, at 21, she embarked on a slightly more grown-up phase of fame during which she described “gay pop” as a “new genre of music” and painted her face like a KISS Kewpie doll.

“It’s hard, because some stuff I look back at and I’m like, ‘JoJo, what were you doing?’” she said.

Siwa and those in her small, sparkly orbit swear that now she’s more herself than ever; happier, too.