Shamel Pitts

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Shamel Pitts is a performance artist, choreographer, conceptual artist, dancer, spoken word artist, and teacher. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Pitts began his dance training at LaGuardia High School for Music & Art and the Performing Arts and, simultaneously, at The Ailey School. A 2003 YoungArts Finalist and first prize winner, Pitts received 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. Pitts 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 to many festivals around the world. He is an adjunct faculty member at The Juilliard School and has been an artist in residence at Harvard University and New York 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 2024 Mac Arthur "Genius" Grant, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Jacob’s Pillow artist residency in 2020, a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Award in Choreography, and a 2018 Princess Grace Award in Choreography. Pitts is the founding artistic director of TRIBE, a New York based multidisciplinary arts collective. TRIBE is a New York Live Arts Live Feed artist in residence.

Shamel Pitts awarded 2024 Mac Arthur “Genius” Grant