Amrita Hepi: A Call to Echo

20 November 2021 – 1 May 2022

Amrita Hepi is a First Nations artist, dancer and choreographer who is fascinated by dance and how we use movement to share social connections. A Call to Echo is the first exhibition for SAM Kids, a dedicated learning and engagement program for children and the young at heart encouraging shared and interactive experiences of art.

Amrita has created a dynamic installation within the Children’s Gallery to enter and encounter the video work A Call to Echo (2021). Amrita is captured in varied acrobatic poses flying across a bright blue wall, above a sea of vibrant blue and orange curtains. In the video Amrita has edited together short cuts of videos featuring people and animals dancing sampled from social media, dance history and her own previous artworks. Amrita’s voiceover tells us, ‘Dancing is like an echo, everything has a dance or a choreography.’ She tells us stories of why she loves to dance and encourages us to think about the ways we encounter dancing in unexpected places everyday.

Through a series of call and response choreography, Amrita invites us to follow her prompts to dance in the gallery: we can copy movements of other people, dance like animals and nature, or move our bodies in any way the music inspires us to. How do you move your body when you are alone, with friends and family, or when you are in a crowd?