Lectures, Workshops, Seminars

Are you seeking better relations between people of diverse cultures within your school, community or workplace?

• Use storytelling and the arts to heal wounds and build bridges
• Learn creative techniques for sharing beyond your cultural borders
• Experience the transformative power of group energy

A practical arts program that engages people of all types in a creative and healing process.

A recent winner of the Ford Foundation’s “Leadership for a Changing World” Award, Nobuko Miyamoto is an artist whose songs, theater works and dances have opened the boundaries between people of diverse cultures for over 30 years. Through lectures, workshops and seminars, Nobuko shares her experience using the arts as a healing and unifying force.

THE LECTURE: Creating Community Beyond Cultural Borders
In an entertaining, interactive lecture, Nobuko shares her experiences working with diverse communities through her stories, songs and video. Engaging the audience in simple, fun exercises, she illustrates the creative and collaborative possibilities within all of us. Nobuko calls us to step beyond our personal and cultural boundaries to show how this diverse world can move in harmony. (1 to 1 1/2 hours)

THE WORKSHOP: Sharing Our Stories, Finding The Oneness
The act of sharing our stories is powerful medicine, especially between people of different cultures. Join Nobuko in an inspirational workshop that creates a safe space to breathe, move and communicate. By utilizing theater games and creative exercises, Nobuko guides you through an invigorating and supportive group process to share stories, open hearts and experience the oneness. (3 hours, 15 to 25 people, large open room)

THE SEMINAR: A Tool Box for Cross Cultural Bridge Building
This intensive, two-day, hands-on seminar gives you a tool box of techniques for the basics in building short and long term projects that deepen cross-cultural understanding. Participants will learn how to release creativity, develop group energy, share spiritual traditions, create contemporary rituals of unity, and more. This training is useful for artists, teachers, organizations, schools, community organizers, corporate administrators, cultural and faith-based groups and all who are looking for ways of deepening intercultural relations. (2 days, 15-25 people)

ABOUT NOBUKO:

Originally a dancer in Broadway and film musicals, Nobuko found her own voice in the social movements of the 70’s co-creating the first album of Asian American songs, “A Grain Of Sand.” Using music to define her own roots, she also found it a powerful means to connect with people of other cultures.

In 1978 she founded Great Leap, producing original works in theater, music and dance, to express the Asian American experience. Following the racial turbulence of the Los Angeles Uprising in 1992, Great Leap made the commitment to become a multi-cultural arts organization, engaging with diverse artists, touring schools and universities with works such as “A Slice of Rice, Frijoles and Greens.”

Creating within communities has always been key to Nobuko’s work. At Senshin Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles, Nobuko makes new song/dances in the Obon tradition, danced yearly by hundreds of participants in Japanese Buddhist communities. With the Vietnamese theater group, Club O’Noodles she co-directed “Laughter From the Children of War” drawn from their personal experiences.

She has collaborated with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in the Hallelujah Project working with the Japanese and Jewish communities at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Nobuko has taught personal storytelling courses at UCLA and enjoys sharing her workshops with students, which usually accompany her performances.

Nobuko continues to tour her one-woman show, “A Grain of Sand.” Her latest CD, “To All Relations”, has become the theme of a series of community residencies she has done in various parts of the country. With the TO ALL RELATIONS PROJECT Nobuko has created an earth healing dance for Detroit’s urban gardening movement; worked with Mexican, Jewish and Japanese community members to perform stories about LA’s Boyle Heights; and recently, co-directed a poetic musical, “Sacred Moon Songs,” with stories from Muslim, Mexican and Japanese communities.


To all relations… mother earth and father sky
To all relations… every nation, every tribe
Every family, every stranger, every friend and every foe
Every form and every creature
To all relations… Mitakuye Oyasin.

song by Nobuko Miyamoto


ABOUT GREAT LEAP:

Great Leap is a Los Angeles based multicultural performing arts organization dedicated to creating and presenting original works in theater, music and dance. Through the creative and collaborative process of performances, workshops and community residencies, Great Leap works with professional artists and community partners to instill a deeper understanding and a sense of connection between diverse peoples. Founded in 1978 by Artistic Director Nobuko Miyamoto, Great Leap is rooted in the Asian American community and promotes cross-cultural exchange with local and nationwide audiences.

Great Leap, Inc., 1145 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 100-D, Los Angeles, CA 90017
(213) 250-8800 ~ (213) 250-8801 fax ~ booking@greatleap.org ~ www.greatleap.org