AMRITA HEPI
A Caltex Spectrum
A Carltex Spectrum
Concept/choreography: Amrita Hepi
Performers: Jahra Rager, Tyrone Robinson, Sarah Vai
Set Design: Alice Joel
Music: Daniel Von Jenatsch, Sarah Scott
Is it possible to transcend class through movement, or do society's inscriptions remain firmly imprinted on the body?
Three performers conduct an embodied exploration of cultural corporeality, navigating a complex entanglement of the theatre's social function, a motorbike and it's ensuing somatic assumptions. They have you surrounded. Dualities intersect, as codes switch 'n cruise the oily spectres of colonialism: the civil versus the savage, loneliness, joy, survival and the fantasia that surrounds colour and the body. Through sound, monologue, and all-consuming physical presence, performers blaze through dances of social mobility over time. A Caltex Spectrum unravels your material multiplicities.
AMRITA HEPI is an artist working in dance, choreography, performance, video and installation. A Bundjulung (AUS) and Ngapuhi (NZ) woman, her practice ensues probing intersecting ideas of authenticity, the perpetuation of culture, tradition, and a 'decolonial imagination' - and questioning where this now resides within a contemporary framework. Her work has taken many forms but always begins from working with the body as a point of archive, memory and resistance. She is a member of the Western Australian Dance Company OCHRES and has worked collaboratively with Victoria Chiu, Marrugeku, Melanie Lane & AmosGerbrahnt, Bhenji Ra and Force Majeure. Amrita trained at the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA) dance college, and Alvin Ailey American Dance School, New York. She has been an artist in residence at BANFF centre for the arts Canada and ACE OPEN South Australia. She has exhibited and performed at Sydney Opera House, Next Wave Festival, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Carriageworks, TEDX, Banff Centre Canada, Art Central Hong Kong, DARK MOFO Tasmania and Impulstanz Vienna.
Dancehouse, Melbourne - March 2018 - all rights reserved
Documentation by Cobie Orger.