The World's Best Dance
Dance Victoria is excited to present a movement workshop with Shamel Pitts, artistic director of Shamel Pitts | TRIBE. This session will explore physical efficiency, expressive range, and clarity through creative prompts. Participants will engage with concepts like embodied movement sources, aliveness within stillness, dynamics, speed, rhythm, and groove. Through visualization and communal dancing, students will uncover their unique individual expressions.
Register through Eventbrite beginning February 5.
About Shamel Pitts
Shamel Pitts 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 Ballets Jazz Montréal. 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 the “BLACK Series,” which has toured extensively to many festivals and performance spaces worldwide since 2016. In 2019, he founded the Afrofuturist dance collective TRIBE – Multidisciplinary Visual Performances. Pitts is an adjunct professor at The Juilliard School, a guest faculty member at Princeton University, New York University, and Wesleyan University and has been an artist-in-residence at Harvard University. He has received numerous prestigious awards, including the 2024 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2021 Bessie Award winner, and the 2018 Princess Grace Award in Choreography. He is also a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, a Jacob’s Pillow artist-in-residence, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of a 2024 MacArthur Fellowship.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Photos will be taken during the workshop. A photo release form will be available to sign. Consent to photos is NOT mandatory in order to participate. If you are under 18 years of age, a parent or guardian must sign the waiver and photo release form.
This Movement Workshop is proudly supported by Season Masterclass Sponsor Stretch Dancewear.
Dance Victoria presents the Canadian Premiere of 2024 MacArthur Fellow Shamel Pitts’ Afrofuturistic arts collective TRIBE on February 20, 2025 at the McPherson Playhouse.
For tickets call box office at 250-386-6121 or toll-free 1-888-717-6121 or buy tickets online at rmts.bc.ca.