About Rabbits Three
Rabbits Three Cultural Connections is a performance company that focuses on innovative work in the cultural arts. The director’s discipline of choice is Japanese Drumming, and she explores how this instrument can communicate her vision. R3 believes in art as a tool to express the human experience interacting in our society- identity, history, conflict, and emotion.
About Cultural Connections
R3 connects arts communities through collaborative performances. When different cultural groups work together on a piece, they learn about each other’s traditions and enrich the understanding of their own. This can culminate in a production that demonstrates the diversity and ability of cultural art.
About Taiko
Taiko is the Japanese word for drum. In the West, it is commonly used to refer to the art form of Japanese Drumming. Around the world, taiko is popular and growing as a contemporary and diverse practice. The powerful drums and full body engagement is attractive to practitioners and audience alike. In North America, it is a majority-female past time, and has strong connections with Japanese diaspora communities. Taiko is based on the concept of three factors working together- mind, body and spirit. Practitioners can emphasis whichever aspect speaks to them as a way to communicate identity, history, visual beauty, or music. In Rabbits Three, taiko is viewed as the perfect vessel to convey emotional messages to an audience through primal rhythms, physical movement, original composition and the ability to connect to other outside art and music disciplines.
Photo by Daniel Torres
About the Director
Carley Okamura identifies as a mixed-race Japanese Canadian. She has loved performance arts from a young age, particularly traditional/ cultural arts. She joined Kita no Taiko, a Japanese drumming group in 2002. Finding taiko allowed her to connect with her Japanese roots, join the local Edmonton Japanese Community Association and launch her lifelong journey to find identity as a biracial yonsei in the Canadian multicultural mosaic.
Carley is a performing member with Kita no Taiko and serves as President of the Executive Board. She is also a board member with Taiko Community Alliance, serving the North American taiko community. She has trained domestically and internationally in taiko, and has directed several stage productions with Kita no Taiko.
She has been nurtured by the Edmonton arts community and is excited to contribute work she is passionate about to our cultural mosaic.