Shamel Pitts: Redefining Black Embodiment and the Future of Dance

Pitts’ newest production, Marks of RED, features six Black women and femmes performing in a womb-like set designed by Mimi Lien. The piece draws on influences including butoh, sumo wrestling, and nightlife culture. While Pitts has performed in his previous five major works, Marks of RED is the first piece in which he does not perform, Dance Magazine reports.

The work is the conclusion of the RED Series, a choreographic trilogy that began with the dance film Lake of RED and continued with Touch of RED. The latter was developed during a residency at Jacob’s Pillow and was influenced by the 2020 fire that destroyed the Doris Duke Theatre. Marks of RED is scheduled to make its New York City debut in January at Lincoln Center, the site where Pitts attended both high school and college.

The Evolution of the TRIBE Collective

After years of touring internationally, Pitts returned to Brooklyn in 2019 to establish TRIBE. The collective serves as a hub for collaborative art-making and a way for Pitts to reconnect with his roots in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The organization now operates out of a condo in Brooklyn that serves as both Pitts’ residence and the collective’s headquarters.

TRIBE functions as an egalitarian space where members can access resources for budgeting, grant writing, and marketing. Marcella Lewis, a performer in Marks of RED and a member of the collective, told Dance Magazine that she uses these resources to support her own choreography.

Pitts is also expanding the organization’s reach through TRIBE Studios. This platform provides workshops, movement practices, and multidisciplinary exchanges for community members and artists, a process Pitts compares to a fashion house’s atelier.

From Batsheva to Afrofuturism

Pitts’ professional trajectory includes training at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, The Ailey School, and The Juilliard School, where he received the Martha Hill Award. His career progressed through performances with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance and Ballets Jazz Montréal before he joined the Batsheva Ensemble and later the main Batsheva Dance Company in 2010.

During his tenure at Batsheva in Tel Aviv, Pitts studied the movement language of Ohad Naharin, known as Gaga. Pitts noted that Gaga unlocked primal and animalistic elements of his dancing that mirrored his experiences in nightlife spaces. However, he also described feeling hyper-visible and occasionally alienated as the only Black dancer in the company, according to Dance Magazine.

Pitts transitioned to independent choreography in 2015 with BLACK BOX, a solo piece premiered in his apartment. This began the BLACK Series, which included BLACK VELVET—a collaboration with Mirelle Martins and lighting artist Lucca Del Carlo—and BLACK HOLE. The latter work, created after the 2016 election, utilized three bronzed dancers to explore Afrofuturism.

Artistic Philosophy and Influence

Pitts defines Afrofuturism as an ethos centered on radical imagination and Black liberation rather than a specific aesthetic. This philosophy informs his collaborative process and his goal of creating new stories for artists of the diaspora.

He’s able to simultaneously center Blackness and an individual voice. He’s in the avant-garde space but also in the center and being celebrated. His work is of America but not American at all; it’s of Earth, but also futuristic, but also super-present.

Melanie George, dramaturg and curator

Poet Claudia Rankine, who collaborated with Pitts on the play Help and serves on the TRIBE board, described Pitts as being both humble and sure in his vision, according to Dance Magazine.