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Shamel Pitts
Gaga/dancers

Headshot Shamel Pitts

2020 Guggenheim Fellow Shamel Pitts 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. Shamel Pitts | TRIBE is also a New York Live Arts Live Feed artist in residence.

Whether onstage or on the streets of Tel Aviv, Shamel Pitts commands attention. When performing with the Batsheva Dance Company, Israel’s premier contemporary dance troupe, he projects magnetic focus and pounces with ferocious abandon.

Gaga/dancers Class

Developed by Israeli Choreographer Ohad Naharin, Gaga/dancers classes deepen dancers’ awareness of physical sensations, expands their palette of available movement options, enhances their ability to modulate their energy, engage their explosive power, and enriches their movement quality with a wide range of textures.

There are no levels and this class is open to anyone with dance background ages 16+. This class will be led by 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and certified teacher of Gaga movement, Shamel Pitts.