Black Like Us Art as a Bridge Nobuko Miyamoto, intercultural artist By Joseph Hong Nobuko Miyamoto for 21 years has used art to cross cultural boundaries and create coalitions through her performance group, Great Leap.
Great Leap has various shows tailored to specific age groups that tour throughout the country.
The children's version of this show reaches 50,000 students each year in the Los Angeles school district. Miyamoto grew up performing, and trained as a dancer and a singer. During the late 1950s, while she was still a teenager, she performed on Broadway in musicals such as Flower Drum Song, and was a dancer in the Hollywood productions of The King and I and West Side Story . However, her career as a performer abruptly changed in 1968 when Italian filmmaker Antonello Branca asked her to help make a docu-drama about the Black Panthers. Miyamoto and the film crew traveled across the United States, chronicling demonstrations and interviewing activists within the Black Power movement.