SUNDAY 23 JUNE 2019
Il Maggiore Theatre, Verbania
9.30 PM

BLACK VELVET

Shamel Pitts (USA-Brasil)
In collaboration with Fondazione Fabbrica Europa e Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo

➣ Platform international projects

Black Velvet – Architectures and Archetypes is an original multidisciplinary artwork created and premiered by Shamel Pitts, Mirelle Martins and Lucca del Carlo in São Paulo, in November 2016, at the Teatro Sérgio Cardoso. Black Velvet is a celebration of the many plots, the beauty, the delicacy and the power that exists within each of us. It is an extraordinary performance that aims to share and make people reflect from the black, that is, from the black skin, wondering in particular on the condition of black women.
In this sense the show is also a research on the sensitivity of ideals, on the models and structures that lead to the formation of one’s own Self. Weaves and structures are conceived and imagined as creative potential. The performance is also the attempt to create, with confidence, a bridge that overcomes the distances that separate us, so as to be able to see and meet each other. By assuming this attitude, some behavioral systems can be destroyed and re-imagined, and then rebuilt. The show develops from a relationship of love and compassion.

The “Black Hole” project was the winner of the CROSS International Performance Award 2018 and was hosted within CROSS Residence 2018

Shamel Pitts

Shamel Pitts is a performative artist, dancer, word artist and teacher. Born in Brooklyn, New York, where he began his education, he studied at the Juilliard School receiving the Martha Hill Award for excellence in dance. He began his career with BJM_Danse Montreal and Hell’s Kitchen Dance by Mikhail Baryshnikov. He currently teaches at Harvard University and Julliard School, and performs with Sharon Eyal and Gay Behar in the L-E-V Dance Company.
He is a teacher of Gaga, a movement language created by Ohad Naharin, and has taught for the Batsheva Dance Company and Young Ensemble. He brought Ohad Naharin’s repertoire to the stage with several companies. He has collaborated with the Movement Invention Project, the SPRINGBOARD DANSE MONTREAL, the Netherlands Dance Theater Summer Intensive, the SUNY Purchase, and the Juilliard School. Shamel created an installation and dance performance called BLACK BOX: Little Black Book of RED. The work has been presented in Brazil, Berlin, Israel and New York since 2015. In 2016, together with the performative artist Mirelle Martins, he created a duet entitled BLACK VELVET: Architectures and Archetypes.

Mirelle Martins

Mirelle Martins (1984) is a dancer, performative artist and independent artistic producer. She graduated in Social Communication at the University of Brasilia in 2006. In 2008 she moved to Sao Paulo. She has worked as independent curator and executive producer on various artistic projects with Brazilian and international artists since 2010. Her research with dance and performance starts in 2013. She establishes an artistic partnership with Shamel Pitts in 2014. From 2015 she is producer and translator of GAGA people dancers movement language in Brazil.
Martins has performed video and site-specific works at SP-Arte (2016), Sesc-SP (2015), Museu da Língua Portuguesa-SP (2015). In 2017 she took part in the “apprentice program of Sidra Bell Dance” in New York. She is currently on tour with ‘Black Velvet’.