Marks of Red
“Marks of RED” is an Afrofuturistic meditation on the “womb space”, exploring Black multiplicity and human connection through perceived spaces of regeneration, enfoldment, implosion, rupture & potential.
“Marks of RED” is Shamel Pitts and the Brooklyn-based arts collective TRIBE’s new live performance in their ongoing RED Series, continuing the choreographer's research to propose and share the colorfulness within blackness.
I have met a multitude of performers from various countries of the African diaspora and heritage and this has widened my understanding as to the diversity of black people as well as formed my realization that we find home through a shared platform.
Shamel Pitts
Shamel Pitts
A 2024 MacArthur Fellow, Shamel Pitts (Brooklyn, NY) is a performance artist, choreographer, conceptual artist, dancer, spoken word artist, director and teacher. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Pitts began his dance training at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and, simultaneously, at The Ailey School and went on to receive his BFA in dance from The Juilliard School. He began his dance career in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance and BJM_Danse Montreal. Pitts danced with Batsheva Dance Company for seven years under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin and is a certified teacher of Gaga movement language. Pitts has created a triptych of award-winning performances, with his multidisciplinary arts collective TRIBE, known as his “BLACK series,” as well as their newly emerging “RED series”, which has toured extensively to many festivals & performance spaces around the world since 2016. He is an adjunct professor at The Juilliard School, a guest faculty member at Princeton University, New York University, Wesleyan University and has been an artist in residence at Harvard University. He is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award in Choreography, a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Choreography, Doris Duke Artist Award Recipient, Knight Choreography Prize Winner, a Jacob’s Pillow artist-in-residence, and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Shamel Pitts | TRIBE has been artist in residence at 92Y Harkness Dance Center and at New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Creative Residency.