This weekend, the Center for the Art of Performance UCLA brings Brooklyn-based multi-award-winning choreographer/performer/spoken word artist Shamel Pitts and his multidisciplinary collective known as TRIBE to the Freud Playhouse on the UCLA campus. With performances on Friday and Saturday, March 3 and 4, at 8 p.m., the artists will present the men’s duet, “Touch of RED.”
This evening-length work reveals the soft and vulnerable sides of manhood while moving within a boxing ring-like set designed by Mimi Lien. The Juilliard graduate and former Batsheva Dance Company member shares his take on what is described in promotional materials as “the colorfulness within blackness.” Set against an original musical score by Sivan Jacobovitz, the choreographer and company member Tushrik Fredericks evoke a “futuristic and voyeuristic gladiator entertainment” that is matched by “an enhanced electrifying effeminacy that heals.”
Pitts has been recognized by the Princess Grace Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bessie and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. The company will soon be touring this piece and others to venues throughout the U.S. and into the U.K. and Serbia.
—Benn Widdey, Culture Spot LA
LOCATION: Freud Playhouse, UCLA Macgowan Hall, 245 Charles E. Young Drive East 90095
TICKETS: $38
INFO:
https://cap.ucla.edu/event/touch-red
Photo by Alex Apt