THINKING IN RED | A MENTORSHIP BY 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.
HOW | SHOWING THE MAKING | SHAMEL PITTS
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.
THE OPEN MOMENT | THINKING IN RED
On Wednesday 6 March, the three-day Thinking in Red mentorship culminated in The Open Moment, a public showing of the material explored and generated in the mentorship process.
In this Open Moment, the audience explores the act of thinking through movement and the body alongside the mentees, as Pitts opens up his artistic strategies to the room. Joined by Tushrik Fredericks, who co-facilitated the process, Pitts and the nine participants present a brief, but insightful showing of the processes and findings from the workshop. Here, audiences were able to gain insight into the mentorship, such as Pitts’ exploration of the Gaga dance movement and the implementation of open-ended prompts for the body, leading to a process of constant exploration, collaboration and deep reflection for the participants.
In The Open Moment, the accessible and gentle shared process of Pitts and Fredericks was shared through both a series of demonstrations, and an open, informal invitation to the audience to engage in these processes themselves.
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2020 Guggenheim Fellow Shamel Pitts is a performance artist, choreographer, conceptual artist, dancer, spoken word artist, and teacher. Born in Brooklyn, New York Pitts began his professional dance career in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance and BJM_Danse Montreal. He danced with Batsheva Dance Company for 7 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 performance art works known as his BLACK series which has been performed and toured extensively at festivals across the world since 2016. He is an adjunct at The Juilliard School and has been an artist in residence at Harvard University. Pitts 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. Pitts 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.
Johannesburg-born, New York-based Tushrik Fredericks is the recipient of the Princess Grace Award (Chris Helman dance honour), nominated by TRIBE (Founding artistic director, Shamel Pitts) in 2021. Fredericks graduated from the Peridance Certificate Program in NYC in June 2015, and has since had the opportunity to work with Ate9 dANCEcOMPANY (Danielle Agami, Artistic Director), Sidra Bell Dance New York (Sidra Bell, Artistic director) and UNA Productions (Chuck Wilt). Fredericks was an assistant lecturer to Sidra Bell at The University of the Arts Philadelphia for Sophomore students (2016-2018). In May 2021 Fredericks received 3rd prize for dance at the SoloTanz Festival in Stuttgart for his first rendition of his self choreographed solo (territory) of the heart and in May 2023 he showcased the completed rendition of the solo at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, NY.
TRIBE’s mission is cultivating space to create a platform for artists – specifically artists of colour – 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 humanise Black and Brown bodies and share the colourfulness within Blackness that allows us to be multiplicitous.
CREDITS:
MENTOR | Shamel Pitts
ASSISTANT | Tushrik Fredericks
MOMENTEUR FOR THE SO ACADEMY | Athena Mazarakis
PARTICIPANTS | Eugene Mashiane, Imaan Latif, Kaldi Makutike, Keaoleboga Seodigeng, Kgotsofalang Mavundla, Lehlohonolo Justice Makhele, Phuti Chokwe, Teresa Phuti Mojela & Tsholofelo Ndaba