HOW | SHOWING THE MAKING: SHAMEL PITTS
From 4 to 8 March, The Centre for the Less Good Idea and the SO Academy hosted the founding artistic director of the Brooklyn-based Afrofuturistic arts collective TRIBE, Shamel Pitts, and South African-born, New York-based collaborative artist, Tushrik Fredricks.
Thinking in RED emerges from Pitts’ RED Series anthology which cultivates the use of physical and metaphysical stimuli, fueled by friction, energy, aliveness (within stillness) and childlike wonder within a vibrant Afrofuturistic landscape.
During this visit, in line with SO Academy’s Thinking In series, Pitts and Fredericks led Thinking in RED, a three-day dance workshop offering South African participants a first-hand experience into Pitts’ creative process. The workshop explored collaborative art and dance-making, with a multidisciplinary approach to movement research, rigour, and play.
Emerging from this visit were two public moments, aimed at opening up artistic process and methodology to live audiences – THE OPEN MOMENT and HOW | Showing the Making.
He begins atop the guzei, arms outstretched, and brought slowly inwards, like a precarious embrace. Then he swings his legs up onto the structure, lies prostrate, sits up and straddles it. It is all within a playful precarity.
During his time in South Africa, Shamel Pitts, assisted by Tushrik Fredericks, began the process of developing a new solo work, engaging in a series of exploratory rehearsals.
In this HOW | Showing the Making, Pitts provides a window into the creation process of this new solo performance, demonstrating the early stages of how a work is made. Extracts of Pitts’ rehearsals, recorded and documented by The Centre, are subsequently shown during the HOW, adding to Pitts’ own demonstration of his artistic process.
In taking audiences through a performative demonstration of his creative methodology, Pitts draws on much of his earlier work, reflecting on his previous processes, and articulating his approach and strategies of making. In this way, the audience is invited to witness the process of making.
Central to the HOW, and serving as a kind of invisible scaffolding, is Pitts’ “Five-step programme for creative practice,” namely, Tuning In, Writing, Play, Research & Resources, and Record.
Throughout it all, Fredericks is actively observing, recording and documenting Pitts’ explorations and moments of discovery. In a moment of gentle exchange, we witness the two exchanging notes and feeding them back into the exploration.
At the end of the performance, a Q&A yields productive conversation around themes of risk, virtuosity and repertoire, pedestalisation, audience interaction, and more.
CREDITS:
CONCEPTUALISER & PERFORMER | Shamel Pitts
ASSISTANT | Tushrik Fredericks
MOMENTEUR FOR THE SO ACADEMY | Athena Mazarakis