Shamel Pitts, a 2024 MacArthur Fellow and 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 and 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 (BJM). 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 performances, with his multidisciplinary arts collective TRIBE, known as his BLACK Series, as well as their newly emerging RED Series, which has toured extensively to many festivals and performance spaces around the world since 2016.

Image credit: Shamel Pitts | TRIBE in Marks of RED. Photographer Alex Apt