Rinse: Amrita Hepi Confronts Power, Identity and Violence Through Dance – Review

Transform 25. Rinse. Image Credit: jma photography.

In the beginning, there is…

An artist, walking backwards, onto a stage of low blue light. An audience, primed and anticipating the first performance of Transform 25.

Amita Hepi, a critically acclaimed dancer and choreographer from Townsville (Bundjulung/Ngapuhi territories) transfixes the audience in ‘Rinse’, a one-woman show which, despite its minimal appearance, touches on almost everything human. In this performance, Hepi looks at the origins of the earth, our bodies, our birth, colonialism and feminism, highlighting the stories which make up the culture we exist in. Her enigmatic presence translates these tales into a fluid melange of words and movement.

Hepi expresses her hybrid cultural identity through her performance, creating emotional intensity using slight, isolated movements: circling wrists, repeating steps, echoing phrases. Tension builds and dispels through a slow increase in volume, chaos, and the frequency of her movements, keeping the audience on tenterhooks as anxiety tightens and lessens. The performance wrinkles then smoothens, before working itself up to a moment of intensity and violence. The sound of a gunshot rings out. 

An imitation game. A dance. A performance of the Haka. A questioning of colonialism through a recalled conversation between the artist and a visiting choreographer. This performance is at times uncomfortable, confusing, but, like life itself, it moves quickly onwards. A whirling dervish of movement and information that never stays too long in one place. 

Transform 25. Rinse. Image Credit: jma photography.

The most striking moment of the performance occurred when Hepi asked the audience to look under their seats to find “a small, explosive device” (a party popper). Talking about power and building worlds, she encouraged us to pick up this “device” and fire it. Amidst all the confetti and fun we’d taken our eyes off the stage. By the time we looked back Hepi was lying on the floor, covered in what appeared to be blood. A sobering moment as a lull fell over the audience, the final intense climax digested and spat out in a moment of violence. 

Charged and full of emotion, it evoked the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the brutal violence caused by colonialism around the world — violence from which we, living in Britain, benefit directly or indirectly through the comfort and security our lives afford us. Caught up in this life of luxuries, it is easy to forget the suffering it is built on. 

If you get the opportunity to see Hepi perform, it is breathtaking to see an artist talking, moving and dancing with so much command of her body and voice. It held moments of seriousness, moments of hilarity, moments of contemplation and tenderness, but it all felt beautifully deliberate. 

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You can keep up to date with Amrita Hepi via her website and Instagram.