Walker Art Center and Northrop Present
Shamel Pitts | TRIBE
BLACK HOLE – Trilogy And Triathlon
Thursday–Saturday, March 21-23, 2024
8:00 pm
McGuire Theater
BLACK HOLE – Trilogy And Triathlon
Concept Direction & Choreographer
SHAMEL PITTS
Performers
SHAMEL PITTS, TUSHRIK FREDERICKS, ASHLEY PIERRE-LOUIS
Video Mapping & Lighting Designer
LUCCA DEL CARLO
Musician & Composer
SIVAN JACOBOVITZ
Additional Music / Sound Collage / Remixes Track ID:
Door Of The Cosmos Sun Ra
AirFlow! Velocity Keru Not Ever
Fever Dream Daniel Avery
Funeral Canticle John Tavener
Radiance Tim Hecker
Heavy Snow ChiHei Hatakeyama
Feeling Good Nina Simone
Fever Dream Daniel Avery
Funeral Canticle John Tavener
Artistic Production Manager
RUS SNELLING
Black Tarp Designer
NAOMI RAPAPORT
Costume Designer
MIRELLE MARTINS
Photographer & Cinematographer
ITAI ZWECKER
Photographers & Cinematographers
THE ADEBOYE BROTHERS
Spoken Word Text
SHAMEL PITTS
Stage Managers
KAZ RUSSELL
Creative Director
MIRELLE MARTINS
Artistic Administrator
E KATRINA LEWIS
Managing Director
BRITTANY WILSON
Digital Creative Associate
PAM PANOZZO
Press Agent
KAMILA SLAWINSKI
Worldwide Bookings
LOTUS ARTS MANAGEMENT, SOPHIE MYRTIL-McCOURTY
BLACK HOLE was developed with the kind support of Trust for Mutual Understanding (TMU), American Dance Abroad, gloATL, PearlArts Studios, CrossAward (Italy), Dock 11 / Eden (Germany), Derida Dance Center (Bulgaria), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, Artis, New York Live Arts, and 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center. The presentation of BLACK HOLE at the Belgrade Dance Festival was supported in part by Mid Atlantic Arts through USArtists International, a program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding.
Additional TRIBE commissioning, development and core operating support is provided by the Mellon Foundation; Arison Arts Foundation; the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; The Howard Gilman Foundation; Dance/NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund, made possible by the Howard Gilman Foundation and Ford Foundation; 92Y Harkness Dance Center; National Performance Network (NPN) Creation, Development & Artist Engagement Fund Project. The Creation, Development & Artist Engagement Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency); New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Accessibility Notes
Sensory Note: This performance may contain rapid changes in lighting and flashing lights.
For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.
Program Note
BLACK HOLE – Trilogy And Triathlon is a multidisciplinary performance choreographed by the award-winning movement artist Shamel Pitts, co-created and performed by his Brooklyn-based arts collective TRIBE. BLACK HOLE constitutes the final installment of Pitts’ “BLACK Series” triptych. Deeply inspired and infused by the spirit of Afrofuturism, this contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk combines dance, original sound, video projection, and light design in a tale of vitality and tenderness, darkness and light, personal growth and collective empowerment.
In BLACK HOLE, 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. Choreographed by 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and 2021 Bessie Award winner Shamel Pitts who also performs in it, the piece features dancers Tushrik Fredericks and Ashley Pierre-Louis; video and lighting designed by Lucca Del Carlo; music composed by Sivan Jacobovitz; spoken word text by Shamel Pitts; and costumes by Naomi Rapaport and Mirelle Martins. Photography and cinematography for the piece are by Itai Zwecker and The Adeboye Brothers.
A NOTE FROM THE ARTIST
In advance of embarking on a multi-year residency with the Walker Art Center and Northrop, movement artist Shamel Pitts considers the creative potential of this unique collaboration. Below is an excerpt from their contribution to the Walker Reader:
I am incredibly touched and propelled forward by Philip Bither (the Walker) and Kristen Brogdon’s (Northrop) three-year commitment to bringing my works, with my arts collective TRIBE, to communities in Minneapolis. I have never received a commitment like this before. (Nor have I ever been to Minneapolis!)
This marks the beginning of a fruitful and intentional partnership for many reasons. The invitation to visit Minneapolis for three consecutive years provides a rich opportunity to share with Twin Cities artists/communities. Over that time, we have planned public and intimate conversations with local artists and patrons, as well as community outreach events, movement workshops, and post-performance talks. We will also bring different multidisciplinary performance works to the Twin Cities each year. Thinking ahead to this multi-year collaboration, what strikes me most is not only how we began this three-year commitment with sharing our works as much as we continue but how we end.
[Tonight’s performance of] BLACK HOLE is the third installment in the BLACK series triptych. According to NASA, “a black hole is so dense that gravity just beneath its surface, the event horizon, is strong enough that nothing—not even light—can escape.” Rather than explain the physics of a black hole, this piece invokes the potency of black holes to explore what the unknown contains: a portal of transformation and collective empowerment through the power of three. In 2018, BLACK HOLE won the Cross Award in Verbania, Italy, and was a New York Times “Critics Pick.” The triptych series began with BLACK BOX: Little Black Book of Red and featured a ruminative solo.
Year two will bring the first live work in the RED series, titled Touch of RED. Touch of RED is a multidisciplinary performance duet inspired by the rapid-fire footwork of boxing, the African American jazz dance style Lindy Hop, Gaga movement language, and nightlife culture.
For the final year, TRIBE will present its newest work in development, which currently has the working title Marks of RED. This work will examine the nuanced multiplicity within the interior and exterior chasms of shared human experiences, especially when narrated by and featuring the viewpoints of predominantly femme-presenting/identifying people of color.
Each of these works is set inside of an Afrofuturistic landscape in which TRIBE artists of color create new stories that shine more luminous than our past. This is the ethos of our TRIBE.
Often, when I think about the word patronage, I envision a partnership mutually invested in the success of a product, but also one that reflects a genuine belief in an artistic voice that culminates into a nurturing relationship between artists and patrons. I envision both artists and patrons walking with one another over time and, together, growing an artistic bond that benefits both sides, as well as the communities in which they present. Yet, within the current economic structure, I know that this is a rare risk to take.
I extend my immense gratitude to the Walker and Northrop for taking such a cultured risk, for allowing me the opportunity to develop as an artist, and for cultivating space for us to grow together.
Read the full article here: Creative Potential of Collaboration: Shamel Pitts on the Start of their Multi-year Residency
Learn More
The performance on Thursday, March 21, will be followed by a post-show reception with the artists in Cityview Bar.
The performance on Friday, March 22, will be followed by a Q&A with Shamel Pitts, moderated by Kristen Brogdon, Director, Artistic & Community Programs, Northrop.
For more information about Shamel Pitts | TRIBE, visit the Northrop website: From Brooklyn to Black Holes Five Facts about Shamel Pitts | Northrop (umn.edu)
Artist Bios
2020 Guggenheim Fellow Shamel Pitts (Concept Direction, Choreographer & Performer) is a performance artist, choreographer, conceptual artist, dancer, spoken word artist, and teacher. Born in Brooklyn New York, Shamel began his dance training at LaGuardia High School for Music & Art and the Performing Arts and, simultaneously, at The Ailey School. He is 2003 YoungArts Finalist and a first prize (level 1) winner of the YoungArts competition. Shamel then 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. Shamel danced with Batsheva Dance Company for seven years, under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin and is a certified teacher of Gaga movement language. Shamel has created a triptych of award winning multidisciplinary performance art works known as his “BLACK series” which has been performed and toured extensively to many festivals around the world since 2016. He is an adjunct at The Juilliard School and has been an artist in residence at Harvard University. Shamel is the choreographer of the play “Help” by acclaimed poet and playwright Claudia Rankine, directed by Taibi Magar, and commissioned at The Shed in New York. He is the recipient of a 2018 Princess Grace Award in Choreography, a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Award winner in Choreography, and a 2020 Jacob’s Pillow artist in residence. Shamel is the artistic director/founder of TRIBE, a New York based multidisciplinary arts collective. TRIBE is a 92Y Harkness Dance Center’s Artist In Residence for the 2020-2021 season.
TRIBE (TRI314 Multidisciplinary Visual Performances, 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. TRIBE’s mission is cultivating space to create a platform for artists – most specifically artists of color – with huge inspiration from the Afrofuturism movement. This movement states that we have a responsibility through our work to tell new stories and create a brighter future that is different, and shines more luminously, from its past. Understanding that Performance Art and Live Art are practices of human connection, TRIBE acts nationally and internationally by developing art exchanges in collaboration with institutions and artists, with a focus on the African diaspora.TRIBE art projects include, but are not restricted to: movement based work, live multidisciplinary performance, video art, video documentary, photography, exhibition, commissioned dance choreography, art residency, and workshops. Ultimately, TRIBE aims to bring the audience and community into experiences that humanizes Black and Brown bodies and shares the colorfulness within Blackness that allows us to be multiplicitous. www.itsatribe.org, @itsatribe
Tushrik Fredricks (Performer) recipient of Princess Grace Award (Chris Helman dance honor), nominated by TRIBE in 2021 is originally from Johannesburg, South Africa. Growing up he found himself drawn towards the style ‘KRUMP‘. He graduated from the Peridance Certificate Program in NYC in June 2015 and has had the opportunity to work with Ate9 dANCEcOMPANY (Danielle Agami, Artistic Director), Sidra Bell Dance New York and UNA Productions. Tushrik was an assistant lecturer to Sidra Bell at The University of the Arts Philadelphia for Sophomore students (2016-2018). In May 2021 Tushrik received 3rd prize for dance at the SoloTanz Festival in Stuttgart for his self choreographed solo '(territory) of the heart' and in November 2022 it will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts. instagram.com/tushrik
Ashley Pierre-Louis (Performer) is originally from Miami, FL. For highschool, she attended New World School of the Arts and later, attended Florida State University, where she graduated with a BFA in dance. She is currently a dance artist and creator freelancing and exploring choreography in New York City. When making, she asks herself and audiences to imagine what our physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us is, and how we can share them collectively in order to create a sense of freedom in the mind and body. She currently performs with Shamel Pitts’ multidisciplinary performance collective TRIBE, Emily Johnson/Catalyst Dance, and Edisa Weeks’ DELIRIOUS Dances. She is also the Dream Partner/ Program Manager for Florida State University’s Arts in NYC program, as well as the Artist Services Associate for Performance Space New York (PS 122). Her past artistic feats includes working as the dramaturg for Shamel Pitts’ work Touch of RED, as well as being the Associate Choreographer for the play Help (2022) by acclaimed poet and playwright Claudia Rankine, directed by Taibi Magar, and commissioned at The Shed in New York. She has premiered the play Thoughts of A Colored Man by playwright Keenan Scott II and director Steve Broadnax III at Syracuse Stage and Baltimore Center Stage as well as performed for the premiere of Donna Uchizono’s work March Under an Empty reign at The Joyce: NY Quadrille Festival. She has been one of GALLIM’s Moving Women spring artist - in - residence and has also been a part of Alvin Ailey’s inaugural Choreography Unlocked Festival under the direction of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women, and Robert Battle. instagram.com/ashleypierrelouis
Lucca Del Carlo (Video Light & Mapping Designer) is a graphic designer and video artist from São Paulo, Brazil, currently based in NYC. Lucca is a founding member of the Brooklyn/New York based multidisciplinary arts collective known as TRIBE. He has created the lighting and video mapping projections for numerous performance works and has toured and performed live with the collective in many countries all over the world. He specializes in transmedia, mixing cinema techniques, concepts of architecture, visual arts, light design, and technology, and integrating those into the direction and creation of scenography, immersive environments and visual live shows. In his view, all ways of visual communication have interlacing points, not only using technology but also using human cognition and its related censorial illusions. Del Carlo’s specialty is mixing it in new ways to inspire and break common patterns in visual expression. luccadelcarlo.com
Sivan Jacobovitz (Musician & Composer) is a producer/musician living in NYC. Dance collaborations include: Kimberly Bartosik's “I Hunger For You” (BAM Next Wave) and “Through The Mirror of Their Eyes” (NYLA - Bessie Outstanding Production Honoree); Shamel Pitts' Black Hole (touring internationally), MENAGERIE (with Gibney Company) and Touch of RED; ASSEMBLY with GREYZONE. instagram.com/sivan_daniel
Rus Snelling (Artistic Production Manager) An Australian artist with a career continuing over 30 years, Rus has worked as a production, stage, site and tour manager, lighting and set designer, consultant, technical director and a fire sculptor with arts organizations, institutions and freelancing on events and installations around the world ranging from intimate theatrical works, shows on and off Broadway in NYC and on London’s West End. His work includes large scale indoor and outdoor festivals, the Sydney Olympic Ceremonies, the Melbourne Commonwealth Games Ceremonies & Cultural Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Montreal Just for Laughs, Edinburgh Fringe, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Vancouver Winter Olympics Cultural Festival, Centennial celebrations, river & street parades, tours & various music festivals. Select artists Rus has worked with are Merce Cunningham, Laurie Anderson, John Leguizamo, Phillip Glass, Brian Eno, Tim Robbins & The Actors Gang, Taylor Mac, Patti Smith, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Bandaloop, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, Abraham.In.Motion, Streb & Phantom Limb Company among many and on projects and tours through Australia, USA, Canada, Tunisia, Europe, Asia & South America. Rus worked at PS122 many moons ago and was the founding Production Manager & Resident Lighting Designer at Oz Arts Inc in Nashville TN for 6yrs before moving on to continue freelancing and is currently touring And So We Walked featuring DeLanna Studi, TRIBE’s ToR and this presentation of BLACK HOLE.
Mirelle Martins (Costume Designer, Creative Director) originally from Brazil, Mirelle Martins received her Bachelor Degree in Social Communications (UnB 2002-06). She has worked as an artist, independent curator and art producer since 2010. In 2013, Mirelle started to research her own artistic expression in performance art with the intensive summer course of Gaga.people.dancers in NYC. Since 2015, she has been producing Gaga courses yearly in Brazil, so far reaching over 1200 students. In 2016, as a 32-year old, Mirelle made her dancing debut in “BLACK VELVET”, a duet by Shamel Pitts, with light designer Lucca Del Carlo. The show toured in the US and internationally from 2017 to 2020, and has received the Audience Choice Award in Stockholm Fringe Festival (Sweden, 2017), and Best out of Town Production by ArtsATL (Atlanta, 2018). The partnership with Pitts continued with “BLACK HOLE” (2018), where Mirelle has collaborated as performer and costume designer. Since 2019, Mirelle is one of the founding artists of TRIBE, Brooklyn-based arts collective led by Pitts, where she also acts as Creative Director. mirellemartins.com
Naomi Rapaport (Black Tarp Designer) is a Dutch-born, Israel-based EcoFashion Designer with over 30 years of experience creating upcycled re-designed fashion pieces. Naomi made her first piece for her daughter out of worn out jeans. Her garments are fashioned from either her own collection of high end materials, or out of materials supplied by her clients. Her brand line has since evolved into a high-end recycled – albeit high fashion – line worn by Israeli artists and celebrities. “Memories, events, joy, happiness, sadness are all parts of the materials I use, blended to create a unique garment with a story on its own,” Rapaport says. naomimaaravi.com
Itai Zwecker (Photographer & Cinematographer) is an Israeli-born director of cinematography, photographer, and video editor, collaborating with Shamel Pitts and later TRIBE since 2018. His photography has been featured in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, and other outlets. Zwecker is based in Brooklyn and Tel Aviv, where he works shooting film, dance, music, documentary and commercial projects. vimeo.com/zwecker
The Adeboye Brothers (Photographers & Cinematographers) are a director duo based in New York City. Their work expands from documentaries, narrative, animations, commercials, and experiential design. Together they have produced and directed documentaries, commercials and animations for The Woodruff Arts Center, Pepsi, Spotify, and have been frequent collaborators of Shamel Pitts and TRIBE since 2018; contributing film and photography for BLACK HOLE and Touch of RED. thepalettegroup.com
Living Land Acknowledgement
The McGuire Theater and Walker Art Center are located on the contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. Situated near Bde Maka Ska and Wíta Tópa Bde, or Lake of the Isles, on what was once an expanse of marshland and meadow, this site holds meaning for Dakota, Ojibwe, and Indigenous people from other Native nations, who still live in the community today.
We acknowledge the discrimination and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and the Americas, including forced removal from ancestral lands, the deliberate destruction of communities and culture, deceptive treaties, war, and genocide. We recognize that, as a museum in the United States, we have a colonial history and are beneficiaries of this land and its resources. We acknowledge the history of Native displacement that allowed for the founding of the Walker. By remembering this dark past, we recognize its continuing harm in the present and resolve to work toward reconciliation, systemic change, and healing in support of Dakota people and the land itself.
We honor Native people and their relatives, past, present, and future. As a cultural organization, the Walker works toward building relationships with Native communities through artistic and educational programs, curatorial and community partnerships, and the presentation of new work.
Thanks to our Partners
Northrop Acknowledgements
ABOUT NORTHROP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Walker Art Center Acknowledgments
Walker Art Center Producers' Council
About the Walker Art Center
Media Partner
To learn more about upcoming performances, visit 2023/24 Walker Performing Arts Season.
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