Clement Paligaru: Melbourne is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. A new project explores how dance and culture can bring different communities together.

Bernadette Nunn: It took New Zealand based artist Shigeyuki Kihari to bring these migrant communities together - using music and dance to learn more about each other.

Teaote Davies - Te Roro n Rikirake Kiribati Youth Group dance co-ordinator: I've never had any association before with the Sudanese people. We learn about their dancing and they also learn about our dancing. Their dancing, is more or less war like, whereas our dancing, the Kiribati people, we're entertainers.

Martin Arop - Dambai Dancing Group of Sudan: I think this is the first time I have known them or heard them but this time we met actually and we did the thing practically with this group so we are happy.

Mariana Maibibi - Kiribati dancer: It's pretty interesting, they're all excited when they do it, they're all happy.

Bernadette Nunn: The artist's mission is to help diverse communities in urban centres find common ground.

Shigeyuki Kihara - artist: Living in an age of global migration where there are new families making homes for themselves alongside establishing families that are already establishing their homes there. How do we make home alongside other people and then get along?

Bernadette Nunn: Shigeyuki helps both groups merge their very different traditions into one dance they perform together.

Michelle Walton - Kiribati dancer: I just didn't think you could merge both cultures together only because we're way different cultures as in one's more relaxed and smooth - the same with the Sudanese but they're just bit more upbeat about things so learning a dance that's the same speed as their beat because it still wasn't the same beat so we just pretty much improvised our dance moves to match the sounds of their beats.

Shigeyuki Kihara: That's the great thing about music and dance. It breaks so much barriers and so much stigma.

Jill Morgan, Multicultural Arts Victoria: Shigeyuki is a pretty extraordinary artist. I think she crosses not only cultural boundaries but also art form boundaries, but then she's developed this talanoa to give the artists and communities a voice.

Bernadette Nunn: This is the latest in a performance series called Talanoa Walk the Talk.

Shigeyuki Kihara: Talanoa in the Samoan language alludes to a process of a exchange of ideas between these two conflicting families, villages or clans coming together and they keep on talking until they actually find some kind of a resolution in finding this mutual ground that's based on love respect and peace.

Dr Katerina Teaiwa - Australian National University: I just felt like this was a very special moment in time because when people dance together there is a transformation there, a real kind of relationship that is built. It was really special.

Shigeyuki Kihara: In many ways the Talanoa Walk the Talk performance and forum is an extension of my identity as a Samoan Japanese person. It's my father that's Japanese and it's my mother Samoan and people so often say that, oh well, that's an odd mix. Well my answer to that is well, what is the right mix? Why is it that people think culture is static and it doesn't evolve, that culture doesn't talk with other cultures?

Bernadette Nunn: This is the seventh in the Talanoa Walk the Talk performance series where Yuki has brought diverse ethnic and religious communities together, in New Zealand and Australia.

Shigeyuki Kihara: Some of the communities that I've worked with in the past has been a collaboration between the Chinese dragon dancers and a Scottish highland pipe band; Brazilian samba and a Cook Island drumming group: Indian hindu and a Samoan congregational church. I did a performance with the indigenous didgeridoo and the Scottish highland drummers; the Maori kappa haka group, performance art group with the Japanese taiko drummers.

It's not about culture clash but it's a culture meeting. It's a culture meeting where cultures meet and they have a conversation, they have a talanoa.

Bernadette Nunn: The Kiribati and Sudanese groups rehearsed over a number of weeks. In the process, they learn more than dance steps - they share food and swap stories, discovering similarities...

Martin Arop: Epecially regarding the custom about the respect of the elders.

Bernadette Nunn: .... and exchanging insights into each other's traditions.

Tereza Kau - Sudanese dancer: Yeah, we learn a lot of things: the way they cook and the way they live. They told us everything about their country.

Michelle Walton: Actually, I learnt a lot. I didn't know much about their culture or anything about their background, tradition. Their tradition is really strong.

Martin Arop: They are an island. They have no natural resources especially animals, cattles, but for us, we have cattles. We get married through cows.
Mador Thou - Sudan community leader: We as southerners, we pay what we call dowry. They don't pay dowry.

Teaote Davies: The difference in marriage, the Kiribati we don't have any endowment. Usually in those many, many years before my dad born, I think the women were sent with a coconut grater and a pounder to make mats and a coconut grater to feed her husband and that's all she sent along to her new home.

Dr Katerina Teaiwa: The difference here is that they just didn't spend a few hours a week rehearsing, dancing, side by side but they actually got time to get to know each other. And that's the essence of talanoa, that it's face to face in depth dialogue, where people have to look at each other in their eyes, hear each other, listen to each other, no matter how long it takes.

Jill Morgan: This is about finding different ways of engagement. I think it's about real ways of learning and about real ways of creating social change.

Dr Katerina Teaiwa: Who would have thought Sudanese community could dance with a Kiribati community or that they would even have heard of each other? So she's done a really profound thing where she's brought these totally disparate marginalised communities really when you think about it in Australia and got them to have this wonderful shared experience.

Shigeyuki Kihara: You have to be really genuine and honest in your approach that you are bringing communities together. It really has to come from the heart.

Mador Thou: What she does actually is amazing. I don't think there is anyone in this world who can do it.

Bernadette Nunn: The point is not the performance but what happens afterwards.

Mador Thou: We are now brothers and sisters we do things together, we share things together, we talk together, we eat together so that's the meaning of multicultural, yeah.

Michelle Walton: If it can be done with a country like Kiribati or Sudan, you could do it with any other culture really.

Martin Arop: They promote unity, they promote the way people leave together peacefully and culturally.

Teaote Davies: We'll stay friends together, we'll keep in touch I'm sure.

Tereza Kau: Yes, I think so. We will be friends.