the company
“…curiously stylish and sincere, glossily cold and tender. Always visually striking, it’s never dull. But it transpires at a distance.”
– The New York Times
TRIBE (TRI314 Multidisciplinary Visual Performances, Inc., d/b/a TRIBE), is a Brooklyn, New York based multidisciplinary arts collective founded by Shamel Pitts in December 2019. The arts collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is composed of international and local artists working across mediums such as movement, choreography, lighting design, video mapping projection, poetry, spoken word, painting, cinematography, scenography, dramaturgy, costume styling, and music composition.
the director
SHAMEL PITTS
Shamel Pitts (Brooklyn, NY), a 2024 Doris Duke Artist Award recipient, 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. He is a first prize winner in The National Arts Competition from YoungArts. Pitts went on to receive his BFA in dance from The Juilliard School and was awarded the Martha Hill Award for excellence in dance. 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 multidisciplinary performances, with his arts collective TRIBE, known as his “BLACK 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 Artist Fellow, a Jacob’s Pillow artist-in-residence, and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow.
TOUCH OF RED – NDP tour support available through December 2027
Touch of RED (2022) is a new duet of two men that will take place inside of a contemporary ring. Its research will deal with the allowance of black men to soften; the power in vulnerability; the meeting point of two individuals within a boxed space that references a futuristic and voyeuristic gladiator entertainment site in which a heat path between the two performers builds not out of aggression or combat but within an enhanced electrifying effeminacy that heals.
Bold. Boiled. Blood.
BLACK HOLE: TRILOGY AND TRIATHLON (BLACK HOLE)
In BLACK HOLE (2018), a trio of Black performers (all of African heritage) shares the stage in a narrative of unity, vigor, and unrelenting advancement. Their journey originates in the darkness of the titular Black Hole, understood not as a cosmic void but a metaphorical place of transformation and potential. Engulfed in an evocative soundscape of original music, sound samples, and spoken word, the dancers embark on an hour-long, uninterrupted journey in movement in which their tenacity and grace are emphasized by cinematic video projections and stark, monochromatic lights. BLACK HOLE’s creation had the Afrofuturism movement as its biggest inspiration. The project marks the initial meeting between choreographer Shamel Pitts and the artists of TRIBE.
Marks of RED
‘Marks of RED, will feature mostly women – presenting and/or identifying – of color. I would like to research the nuances that are memorialized to/into womanhood,
especially for those who identify as women/black women, and the “womb space” (metaphorically?) as a home, a bathtub, a threshold, a nightclub.
Marks of RED (working title), will research the nuanced multiplicity within the interior and exterior chasms of shared human experiences, specially narrated by, and featuring the viewpoints of, predominantly femme presenting/identifying people of color.
The work will explore concepts such as the “womb space” – viewed metaphorically as a home, a playground, a bathtub, a disco ball, a threshold, a nightclub, a space of enfolding (& regeneration) that ruptures and overflows. It will explore the effect that memory has on our experiences, senses, bodies, reality, and our imaginative possibilities. In the “womb space” anything can happen. Our futures are not predetermined by the past – be it history or even memory.
I Imagine a frontal proscenium stage Scenic designs & scenic elements by Mimi Lien
There is a lot more that I will share about MoR regarding concepts & environment
here are a few words:
Butoh. SUMO. Techno.
w o m b’
–Shamel Pitts
Marks of RED is a work for 6 to 9 performers. The company will be doing a creative residency at ICA Boston in July 2024 that will focus solely on the connection between the proposed performing artists & generating movement//choreography.
SHAMEL PITTS — GAGA/PEOPLE + GAGA/DANCERS CLASSES AND WORKSHOP
Shamel Pitts is a certified Gaga movement instructor since 2010, teaching Gaga with institutions, companies, and centers all over the world.
TUSHRIK FREDERICKS — MOVEMENT WORKSHOP
Tushrik’s work continues to research and push the boundaries of the limits that ‘man’ has placed on himself when it comes to rigor on the body and mind which blurs the fine line between sanity and insanity, thus resulting in a highly physical practice which pushes the limits of the psyche.Drawing information from many different movement techniques, this practice consists of physical research which pushes durational studies which then informs how the physical being relates to the mental being. The research feels highly sacred as well as spiritual in the way that we relate to the world and all things around and inside us. Tushrik believes that it takes pushing the body to extreme physical boundaries so that we may reach moments of bliss by breaking beyond those boundaries and connecting to our higher purpose.
MARCELLA LEWIS — MOVEMENT ALCHEMY
Movement Alchemy is a movement language Lewis created and has been investigating for 2 years. It is the art/process/practice of transmuting something from one form to its higher more evolved form through movement; using water, fire earth, air and spirit–all elements we have within us.
