Judy Mitoma receives distinguished Award

Judy Mitoma, Director of UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance received the 2003 John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award for her many outstanding contributions as an educator, artist, scholar, producer, and arts advocate to have a profound impact on the way that Asian performing arts are presented and understood in the United States and around the world. The award is presented by the Trustees of the Asian Cultural Council.

Judy Mitoma, Director of the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance, is also a Professor of Dance at UCLA in the Department of World Arts & Cultures. A Dance Ethnologist and dancer by training, her areas of specialization are Java and Bali in Indonesia, and Japan. She was founder and served as Chair of World Arts & Cultures from 1982-1997, establishing full departmental status for the program in 1995. She worked on the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival and served as a co-curator of the 1990 Los Angeles festival with Peter Sellars. Independently directing several Asian Performing Arts Summer Institutes (APASI) in 1977, 1979, 1981, 1984 and 1988 she has brought many artists from Asia to the UCLA campus.

In 1995, she established the Center for Intercultural Performance (CIP) to support research, creative experimentation, documentation, and public outreach for the UCLA campus. Under her leadership UCLA/CIP has launched three major initiatives: The Asia Pacific Performance Exchange Program (APPEX) funded by The Ford Foundation, The UCLA National Dance/Media Project funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and a Humanities Residency Fellowship program with the Rockefeller Foundation.

Mitoma was Director of the World Festival of Sacred Music - Los Angeles in 1999 and 2002. She recently developed a performance work with APPEX artists - "The Art of Rice Traveling Theatre - which toured Hawaii and California in fall 2003. She is Editor in Chief of a publication/DVD "Envisioning Dance on Film and Video," published in 2002 by Routledge and “Narrative/Performance Cross Cultural Encounters at APPEX”, 2003.