Northrop, the Walker Art Center, and TU Dance Present
In~Practice Movement Workshop by Shamel Pitts
Mon, Mar 3, 9:30–10:45 am
TU Dance Center
Registration Required, Limited Capacity
Explore movement with award-winning creator Shamel Pitts, artistic director of Shamel Pitts | TRIBE. This workshop will focus on developing physical efficiency, proficiency, expressive range, and clarity based on creative prompts. Participants will physically examine concepts such as embodied movement sources, aliveness within stillness, dynamics, speed, rhythm, and groove, while incorporating visualization to discover their unique individual expression through dancing in a communal space. This workshop is open to all levels of dancers and available to participants thanks to a partnership between Northrop and TU Dance.
The class is free for University of Minnesota students, faculty, and staff. Registration is required.
This class has a limited capacity and is not open to observers.
About Shamel Pitts
Shamel Pitts (Brooklyn, NY), 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 & 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 BJM_Danse Montreal. 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 multidisciplinary performances, with his arts collective TRIBE, known as his “BLACK series,” which has toured extensively to many festivals and performance spaces around the world since 2016. He is an adjunct professor at The Juilliard School, a guest faculty member at Princeton University, New York University, Wesleyan University, and has been an artist in residence at Harvard University. He has received a Princess Grace Award in Choreography, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, a Jacob’s Pillow artist-in-residence, and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow.
Know Before You Go
Class Location:
TU Dance Center
2121 University Ave W
St Paul, MN 55114
Directions
Class Begins: 9:30 am
Duration: 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Parking: TU Dance Center is located at 2121 University Avenue West in the Raymond-Midway area of St. Paul, just east of Vandalia Street, directly behind the Subway restaurant. (Do not park in the Subway parking lot.)
- By public transit, the center is 2.5 blocks east of the Raymond Avenue LRT Station on the Green Line.
- By car, the center is convenient to I-94 and both downtowns. Accessible parking and wheelchair ramp access is available directly in front of our main entrance on the building’s east side.
The Performance at Northrop
Acknowledgments
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
The presentation of Shamel Pitts | TRIBE was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.