Amrita Hepi: In Rhythm with ONDINE

There is a certain gravity to Amrita Hepi. A choreographer and dancer of Bundjalung (Australia) and Ngāpuhi (New Zealand) heritage, she is an artist whose practice stretches across dance, performance, video, and installation. Her work, often shifting between intimacy and spectacle, investigates the body’s role as a vessel for memory, identity, and cultural narratives.

It is this blend of intellectual rigor and instinctual grace that made Amrita the perfect muse for our ONDINE collection campaign. Against the raw beauty of Aotearoa’s west coast, Amrita translates ONDINE’s sculptural forms into a living movement and grounds the campaign with a meditative body-scan, an invitation to catch our breath.

ONDINE explores themes of ritual and rhythm, our relationship to the natural world, and the transcendent. It was with these ideas in mind that we sat down with Amrita, in the midst of a schedule that spans continents, collaborations, and constant creation, to talk about her creative practice, relationship to ritual, and the elemental pull of nature.

Hi Amrita, can you start by telling us about your creative practice and your history with movement and choreography.

I’m an artist who works with choreography and performance, mostly with liveness. My history with this is long and constantly changing and evolving.

One of the things we’ve thought a lot about as part of ONDINE is the idea of ritual. What practices in your life feel ritualistic, whether through the body, breath, or the way you prepare to move or create?

My rituals tend to be quite mundane, like finding where the water is in a new place, resetting my wardrobe or chucking things out if I’m feeling stressed, eating the same thing every morning in a new place when I’m in a kind of mini routine. And then in regards to preparing to move or make something, I don’t know if it’s a ritual but I have to get myself into a zone whereby I am kind of tricking myself into thinking: “I am just taking notes, I am just moving to sense things out, this is just a few small words, moves, a sketch,” in order to get myself to begin with lots of options and an intimacy without creating a pressure cooker of an environment. It’s simultaneously focused and also can look like dithering or distraction in the beginning. And miraculously I repeat this focused/distracted dance a lot, hence maybe it’s now a ritual.

With great effort, with repetition, without trying to do too much.

By giving it the attention and the respect it deserves. By trying not to project myself into every part of it. By knowing that there is Vā [the sacred, relational space that binds people, nature, and spirit] between myself and it.

What aspects of filming the campaign and wearing the collection resonated with you, and how did they connect to your sense of movement and style?

Being in Aotearoa, one of my homes, and taking part in a Karakia [a traditional Māori prayer to invoke spiritual guidance and protection] at the start of shooting, and of course, I loved the earrings I got to wear. They felt like they would stay put even if I was moving a lot. I always think dancers have great style, and I have always said my own style is lazy with elegant aspirations (or fast and relaxed), so I love jewellery that can stick with me, that I can forget about until I put it on in the morning and it makes me smile. That doesn’t get stuck in my hair, that I can swim in, run in, and that lives on me and with me.

“I LOVE JEWELLERY THAT CAN STICK WITH ME, THAT I CAN FORGET ABOUT UNTIL I PUT IT ON IN THE MORNING AND IT MAKES ME SMILE.”

All of the earrings. Every single pair.

The campaign was filmed on the west coast of Aotearoa, a place rich in elemental energy and connected to your heritage. How did being in that landscape shape your experience of movement and creation during the filming?

There was a great reverence with shooting there. I thought a lot about Taniwha and Whenua. And I really loved having Rae, the makeup artist who was local, and Matt who works at Sarah & Sebastian, on the shoot with me, two people that understood the complexity of the Tangata Whenua.

What do you hope others feel after experiencing your movement or being present with your work?

Every work is very different, and I’m not in the business of dictating hope to a room or an audience. I am however in the business of ideas, experiences, rigour and movement. I hope that no one ever says: Amrita’s works all look the same, and that’s why I am here.

Many. But at present I have just finished a full and happy few months of making a new work called The Act for Rising Festival, working with my sister on a new show at Passage, and beginning the European tour leg of Rinse at Avignon Festival. The thing I am looking forward to is sleeping and swimming. But also, if Sophie Calle or Michelle de Kretser are reading this, let’s have a drink and talk about collaboration. On me!