Australian choreographer and performer Amrita Hepi comes to Ottawa to help launch 2026 with the National Arts Centre and Indigenous Theatre. Performances of her solo work Rinse, acclaimed for its witty take on beginnings, memory, and heritage, take place from January 22 to 24.
The work was co-written with theatremaker Mish Grigor, and has been touring, including performances at the Festival d’Avignon, across Europe, and in Australia.
Rinse
What is it about the beginning that remains intoxicating?
Hepi’s Rinse delves into the pure romance of new beginnings — that first rush of love, the first chapter of a new story… What happens when that first intense thrill begins to fade?
She uses movement, text, and satire with a playful edge in the work, telling personal stories that relate to dance, art, feminism, desire, love, popular culture, and colonial history. The performance is intimate, but epic in scope, and creates a kind of mashup where truth and fiction, memories and myths collide.
The stage is brightly lit, and her costumes and set are in white and blue, creating a stark and striking background for vibrant movement and a monologue with a cheeky tone. Rinse explores dance as a space where memory and resistance come together.
The performance takes place in English with French surtitles, and the performance on January 24, 2026, will be interpreted in American Sign Language (ASL).
Rinse will also be presented at Public Energy Performing Arts in Peterborough on January 28th.
Amrita Hepi
Based in Naarm and Bangkok, multidisciplinary artist and choreographer Amrita Hepi creates works that revolve around the notion of archive, in particular, with respect to the body and how it is influenced by ancestry, people, events, and environment. She is from the Pacific (Bundjalung/Ngāpuhi) territories.
Amrita trained at NAISDA, Australia’s leading performing arts training organisation designed specifically for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, as well as Alvin Ailey in New York City. She has won the people’s choice award from the Keir Choreographic Award twice, among other accolades and recognition.
Her work has been performed and commissioned in Australia 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 work examines notions of historical fiction, and the ways that Indigenous culture has become commodified globally in a quest for “authenticity”, using a satirical lens. The theme of origins, and how body, land, myths and stories, both real and imagined, come together to create a sense of who we are, runs through much of her work.
Collaboration and kinship are important to her body of work.
Mish Grigor
Writer and director Mish Grigor uses autobiography, humour, and fiction in performance works that span a range of formats. She is interested in the unpredictable, and often uses dialogue and conversation in her pieces.
Director of APHIDS with Lara Thoms and Eugenia Lim, Mish is based in Melbourne, Australia. APHIDS is a way for the three artists to create a practice that is greater than the sum of its parts. The organization works in media that ranges from gallery to theatre shows, text based works, and more.
She is also a performer who has taken the stage to sold-out houses in the UK and Australia.
- Find tickets and show information for Rinse at the National Arts Centre, January 22 to 24 [HERE].
- Find tickets and show information for Rinse at Peterborough’s Public Energy Performing Arts Centre on January 28 [HERE].
Are you looking to promote an event? Have a news tip? Need to know the best events happening this weekend? Send us a note.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.
Sign up for the Ludwig Van Toronto e-Blast! — local classical music and opera news straight to your inbox HERE.
- PREVIEW | National Arts Centre Dance & Indigenous Theatre Kick Off 2026 With Amrita Hepi’s Rinse - January 9, 2026
- PREVIEW | Art In Action: Climate — A New Arts Festival In Niagara - January 9, 2026
- PREVIEW | Soundstreams Presents Transoceanic — Part Of Their Free TD Encounters Series - January 8, 2026
