Dancing in Circular Time

Amrita Hepi, a choreographer with Bunjalung and Ngāpuhi roots, has come a long way from her home in the Pacific. She finds herself in Cork city, my hometown, as she tours her solo work (in collaboration with theatre-maker Mish Grigor) “Rinse” across Europe this autumn. It’s an odd coincidence, one that only emphasises how small the dance world really is. Over Zoom I ask, after having sent her a list of pubs to check out if she gets the chance, how things are going on her first trip to Ireland. She tells me that after spilling some of her coffee in a café that morning about three people came to help with a chorus of ‘sorries.’ While the English are known to apologise, we take it to an Olympic level in Ireland.

Amrita Hepi in “Rinse.” Photograph by Zan Wimberley

Hepi, as a woman indigenous to both Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand), grapples with her training in Western contemporary dance and her own origins. There’s a lot of thought in her work, when talking about the ideas at play she often touches on incredibly provoking concepts of chronology and anthropology with a conversational ease. Though dealing with some heavy philosophy she seems unburdened, easy going, happily unearthing all the complexities of her practice. Even the typical opening question, “tell us about your work,” invites concepts so big and poetic, you wonder how she can even begin to turn them into dance. This conversation has been edited for clarity.

Tell us a bit about “Rinse.” How did it come about?

I made “Rinse” with Mish Gregor as part of a choreographic award. Originally, I applied to make this work after being at ImPulsTanz in Vienna. I remember dancing and thinking that I sometimes feel claustrophobic with all these people inside my body, at other times I felt all this company inside me, that so many people are kept alive from the practice of dancing. So there were these two kinds of feelings that were arriving in my practice at that time. As I was participating in other people's works, I thought to myself if I could hold the image of a place, a person, or a technique, cut out what I liked about it and kind of rinsed it out a little bit, then that could be something that holds me in a steadfastness. So that’s a sort of precursor.

I got in touch with Mish because I was not à la mode in terms of talking while dancing. I think it's a real skill. I guess theatre with a capital T has never really taken me, I’ve always been frustrated with it, thinking ‘well you could’ve done that in an action.’ I really appreciated Mish’s work and asked her to come on as a dramaturg, and we started writing things together. At that point we made a draft for the award and then went into Covid. As we came out, I started to think about beginnings. Not only in a choreographic sense but in a historical sense. One of the things I’m interested in in my practice is the dilemma of authenticity, and this comes from being an Indigenous person, but also a fascination in the idea of realness and fakeness.

A central theme to this work is beginnings. What does that look like?

I probably say “in the beginning” about sixty times on stage, each time making a little tear within the work. Each beginning has to be a completely new tone not only in the body but in the text. I was conscious of not making the language overly complicated, which is a real skill that I had to wrestle with, how to keep the humour alive in the dance and the text. There was also an idea of using idiom in the body but not in the text.

Amrita Hepi in “Rinse.” Photograph by Zan Wimberley

As an Indigenous artist, what sort of cultural differences are there between ideas of beginnings in the West versus in Indigenous cultures?

There are so many timelines happening in the work. Inevitably I’ve had these discussions of having this indigenous culture, both Māori and Aboriginal, and you have—especially on the Aboriginal side—this idea, and people will say it to you, of having the oldest living culture, going back 60,000 years. Then when I was in Europe people would point things out and say ‘this began in the 16th century.’ I would look at that and think ‘but I know rocks and fields and things from my family where our blood is in the ground.’ The buried placentas of generations. For Māori culture you learn your Whakapapa, so you’re singing and dancing your whole family line. So, when I talk about engaging with Indigenous time sometimes it's thinking in a circular manner, thinking in deep time.

In Australia I feel like I keep coming back to this notion of ‘Aboriginal, wow, that’s a long time! That’s the beginning right there!’ How do you deal with something that’s still so present in the landscape, in the country, in the understanding of a songline from one side to the other? I feel sometimes indigenous people are not always entitled to a beginning, middle, and end. That they weren’t always given the autonomy to have their own say in their destiny. How do you deal with the fractured mess that comes out of that?

I guess there’s also a spiritual thing to also contend with, the big stories of creation. They’re myths, but I think myth is at the threshold of history, that these are important in order to understand ourselves as a land, as a country, as a people. This is why I start with “in the beginning,” it’s like a constant yarn.

For you, what does that idea of circular or deep time look like?

When I say circular time it's this very practical thing: I’m born with a name and then I’m given a name that relates to a place, and that name relates to a mountain, and that relates to a family member. Maybe circles are the best way we talk about it, but perhaps we need to think of it as concentric. I remember once I was trying to curl my eyelashes and a family member said to me ‘you know your ancestors were in the sun for many years in order for your eyes to go down like that.’ There's a sort of choreography to that, a dance to being where you are in relation to the world. I say this without any sentimentality, but it's that connection to nature. I know who I am in relation to these places. A lot of people were taken from their indigenous country in Australia, so it's thinking of what your old people would have been seeing, what shaped their hands and how they shaped yours. Yeah, I don’t really use an eyelash curler anymore [she grins].

Amrita Hepi in “Rinse.” Photograph by Zan Wimberley

You’ve spoken before about, as an indigenous person, being born into a political body? How does having a political body shape your work in the studio?

It plays out on a technical level. Knowing the difference between dancing on sand and a hot rock. That changes how your feet are. Knowing you come from a long tradition like Kapa Haka, so noticing my jaw will kind of move in a certain way. I suppose there’s a sort of politic that comes into that, the things that have happened underneath your foot to shape your foot, the songs that you’ve sung that shape where your jaw or your eyeline will go. I say in the work that in order for a dance to work it requires an audience real and imagined. Sometimes there’s an expectation of feathers or sand or paint, a certain fetishist obsession with how the body must be. I know however that this is also something that’s perpetuated by the pioneers who opened the doors for indigenous dance.

How do we defang this almost piousness or puritanical idea within indigenous culture that there’s only one way of doing it—which is absolutely an impossibility? Cultures and practices change over time. We don’t want to be defined by that western anthropological lens.

You’ve spoken before about decentring in your practice. I see that your work “A Call to Dance,” where you would ask people to make their own dance, that idea of decentring is quite prominent.

In Australia, we’re steeped in so much from Britain that we often look to Europe to define us. At the time of making “A Call to Dance” I was playing with the idea of cultural dance. I would be approached by people saying, ‘oh you’re so lucky to have a cultural dance.’ I would think, well then what is culture? Do you not have any? You have Madonna! Culture is not this thing that exists in the sky.

The thing I kept getting asked about was Native, Indigenous dance. Yeah of course it’s sacred, when something gets taken away from you it has an added weight to it, but it's also very mundane. When thinking about decentering, particularly cultural dance that hasn’t entered into this quagmire of anthropology or sacredness, how does it continue to be proactive for people to know themselves having this framework for accessing cultural material? For some people it's rooted in a technical centre, for others it's rooted in a place or idea, a concept.

Amrita Hepi in “Rinse.” Photograph by Zan Wimberley

When I think of Australian cultural dances, I tend to think about the Nutbush.

[She laughs] That’s a cultural dance we can all get behind! I’m a hard advocate for the Nutbush. When I was studying in America, I would put it on and explain how it was a really big deal. Tina Turner may as well be Australian! I think when we talk about Indigenous dances or cultural dances there’s this notion of not being able to understand until you’re allowed to, but then you have a dance like the Nutbush or the Macarena where everyone knows it. How can we make a dance that can sit in people’s pocket? That’s kind of the height of culture.

Have you noticed a difference in response between Indigenous and Western audiences?

When you perform somewhere like Montreal there’s an understanding or at least a strong response. I had someone heckle me in Austin, which I feel never happens in a dance show, as I was talking about Horton technique. Of course, this being in America, I was getting into a lateral T pose when someone shouted out ‘you call that Horton?!’ [she chuckles]. The script is specific enough to be my story, but broad enough for people, though it is rooted in Australia, to understand it. In North America there’s an understanding of the subject matter, especially since it's being done in English. It’s very different from when it's being performed in France or Turkey.

But also, I feel like the West is a fantasy. That people in the West don't even feel like they belong to it. At least that’s the impression I get from a lot of artists in the circles I’m in.

So what’s next for “Rinse?”

We premiered it in 2022 in Sydney, since then we’ve toured it to North America and Europe. I am hoping to finish “Rinse” in New Zealand, to take it back home. That’s the audience you’re thinking of when you’re making the piece. But they’re also the most intimidating audience because they’ll tell you when it's not correct. They’re the audience that I hold in the highest esteem, because they’re the audience I'm dreaming of when I'm making.

I love this work very dearly, but I do think after next year, we’ll see, maybe it's time to retire it. Knowing when to end something is important as an artist, to not replicate the one hit.

Following its run in Cork (Ireland), “Rinse” will tour to London, Nottingham, and Leeds (England), Mulheim and Frankfurt (Germany), and in January 2026 in Ottawa, Peterborough, and Victoria (Canada). Further information can be found at amritahepi.com.

Eoin Fenton

Eoin (they/he) is a dance maker and writer based in Cork (Rep. of Ireland), and London (UK). They have danced across Ireland and London in venues including The Place, Project Arts Centre Dublin and Galway Cathedral. Eoin graduated with a BA in Choreography from Middlesex University in 2024 and began writing as part of the Resolution Reviews programme. They are a regular contributor to A Young(ish) Perspective.

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