Rinse

Of dual Bundjalung, Indigenous Australian, and Ngāpuhi, Aotearoa/New Zealander descent, Amrita Hepi is a rising star in the international contemporary dance scene. Over the past few years, she has been in widespread demand thanks to her talent, rigour, and remarkable ability to make complex choreographic and performative ideas recognisable.

Her interest as an artist is in the idea of archive particularly in relation to the body and how it is organized by people/event. By coalescing fact and fiction, memoir and ethnography, the local and the singular into the performance/art work she makes. Amrita trained at NAISDA Dance College and Ailey Dance School. A critically acclaimed artist she has twice been the winner of the people’s choice award from the Keir Choreographic Award, was part of the Forbes 30 under 30 for artists, and has shown and been commissioned nationally and internationally.

In Australia, she has been invited to collaborate with the country’s most prestigious dance companies and leading venues, including Marrugeku, ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Southbank), Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (Sydney). Elsewhere in the world, her work has been presented at South East Dance (Brighton), Art Central (Hong Kong), The Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Fusebox Festival (Austin), and others.

Hepi approaches dance as social function and method of resistance. She views it as a state of being, a concrete action that opens up possibilities of community and transmission, and a vital joyous space. Her work intertwines disciplines and media, drawing on installation, performance, video, sculpture, literature, new technologies, and more.