Amrita Hepi

PROJECT
In this new work titled Liable, Amrita Hepi suggests we don’t trust the dancer, nor the screen, and adopts the position of the unreliable narrator. Drawing on research into the gaps between text and meaning Hepi seeks to explore the impossible spaces between action, witness, memory and recollection. Working with composer Daniel Jenatsch and performers Sarah Aiken and Jonnine Standish, dance and song will be in concert with a moving image landscape designed by visual artist Rel Pham.

Using NGV’s Great Hall as both performance space and score, Hepi charges the performers, soundscape and the screen-based text to move in and out of sync, to toy with instances of how the moving body might fill in the gaps that music, speech and text create. Reflecting on how we receive not only information but conversation, Hepi pulls us into playful polyphony, exploring both how we might listen with our bodies but also how we might speak with them.

Liable was commissioned by NGV as part of the NGV Triennial 2023. With support from the Australian Research Council through research and commissioning partner Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum, a research project hosted by University of New South Wales, with Art Gallery of New South Wales, Monash University Museum of Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and Tate.

PROJECT CREDITS
Choreographer/Performer: Amrita Hepi
Creative Producer: Zoe Theodore
Music Composition: Daniel Jenatsch
Rehearsal Director/Performer: Sarah Aiken
Moving image: Rel Pham
Performer: Jonnine Standish
Dramaturg: Mish Grigor
Wardrobe, costume and dressing: D&K – Ricarda Bigolin & Chantal Kirby

ABOUT
Amrita Hepi (Bundjulung/Ngapuhi Territories) is a multidisciplinary artist & choreographer based in Naarm and Bangkok.

Her interest as an artist is in the idea of archive; particularly in relation to the body and how it is organized by ancestry/people/events and environment.

By coalescing fact and fiction, memoir and ethnography, the local and the singular into the performance/art work she makes.

Amrita trained at NAISDA & Alvin Ailey NYC. A critically acclaimed artist she has twice been the winner of the People’s Choice Award from the Keir Choreographic Award, was a Forbes 30 Under 30 for artist, and has shown and been commissioned nationally and internationally.

Amrita is a Triad member of performance company APHIDS, on the board of directors and artistic associate for RISING festival and part of the Artistic Associate group for STRUT dance. Her commitment to collaboration and kinship are key tenets to her practice.

Liable was commissioned by NGV as part of the NGV Triennial 2023. With additional support from the Australian Research Council through research and commissioning partner Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum, a research project hosted by University of New South Wales, with Art Gallery of New South Wales, Monash University Museum of Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and Tate.