Mixed Race Studies

Amrita Hepi’s New Dance Collab Explores Authenticity, Race & The Politics Of Passing

Oyster
Paddington, New South Wales, Australia
2016-05-10

Jerico Mandybur

Local hero Amrita Hepi is showcasing her new dance piece ‘Passing’ — with costumes by Honey Long and sound by Laverne of Black Vanilla — alongside Jahra Rager at Next Wave Festival this week. To celebrate, we linked her up with another one of our fave woke ladies, Jerico Mandybur, and they chatted through identity, the WOC diaspora and the politics of passing.

Get to know the story behind the stellar performance piece below (before you make the good life choice to head along to Next Wave and see it IRL).

Jerico Mandybur: Hey! So it’s called ‘Passing’, can you talk to me about what naming it that means, and basically what the concept of “passing” means in relation to the work?

Amrita Hepi: Well, we came up with the idea of naming it ‘Passing’, because the work itself kind of matched bodies under pressure. So the idea of women of colour and their intersections, and what it means to be of many world races and titles, and I guess when you’re “passing” there’s always this kind of fear of inauthenticity, which is something that’s very human that we all feel. But in relation to the work, it was just feeling like we were constantly only just passing, and there was this fear of almost like being discovered as something other than what we were. Does that make sense? [Laughs]…

Read the entire interview here.

Amrita Hepi interview

Time Out Sydney
2015-05-24

Dee Jefferson, Arts & Culture Editor

Sydney knows – and loves – Amrita for her Hollaback nights and Beyoncé dance classes, but her latest project is far more fierce

Amrita Hepi was in the final creative phase of her dance-theatre work Passing, with New Zealand-born dancer and spoken-word artist Jahra Wasasala, when Beyoncé dropped her first Lemonade single and film clip, ‘Formation’.

“I was like man… What the!? This is everything we’re going through right now. And people were saying ‘How dare she have a political statement? She’s not even that black! She dyes her hair blonde!’.’”…

…Passing explores identity from the perspective of two women who not only have mixed cultural heritage, but whose dance practice spans genres as far apart as classical ballet, contemporary Indigenous choreography and dance hall…

Read the entire interview here.

Passing

Next Wave Festival 2016
Northcote Town Hall
189 High Street
Northcote, Victoria 3070
2016-05-12 Through 2016-05-18, Tuesday-Friday 18:30 AEST, Saturday 15:15 and 18:30 AEST (Local Time)

Presented in association with Darebin Arts’ Speakeasy

Choreographers/Performers: Amrita Hepi (Bundjalung NSW/Ngāpuhi NZ) and Jahra Wasasala (NZ)

Using the notion of racial passing as a catalyst for a series of movement monologues, spoken word passages and physical conversations, PASSING maps two bodies under pressure from the responsibility that comes from being of mixed cultural background.

A trans-pacific partnership of physical force, PASSING combines Amrita Hepi’s hip-hop prowess and background in contemporary dance with Jahra Wasasala’s grounded and ritualistic choreographic style to create a provocative, complex and deeply magnetic work—a physical dialogue that exists between two daughters of diaspora.

Bringing together some of Australia’s most talented creatives including an original score by Lavern Lee (Guerre, Cassius Select, Black Vanilla) and styling by installation artist Honey Long, PASSING is an evocative portrait of the ‘exotic’, and the exhausting effects the title can bear.