Touch Of RED Touches Deeply
By Garth Grimball
On Saturday, January 13, Shamel Pitts | TRIBE presented Touch Of RED in a dance studio at NY Live Arts as part of the Live Artery festival; the festival is an opportunity for artists to showcase their works for presenters in town for the annual APAP conference. The work premiered in the spring of 2023 and has toured nationally. The bare bones studio showing, devoid of theatrical lighting and stage design, heightened the intimacy of an already vulnerable performance.
In a full scale production, Pitts and Tushrik Fredericks perform in a container of red light designed by Mimi Lien—a lipped square stage that emanates red light contains the duo with an overhead lid hanging above. At the Live Artery showing a square of red tape was the only stage setting. In both scenarios the audience is seated in the round.
Pitts describes Touch Of RED as a duet “inspired from the rapid-fire footwork of boxing, the African-American jazz dance style Lindy-Hop, Gaga movement language and Nightlife culture” set in a stylized boxing ring to examine the ways Black men “are perceived and perceive themselves” within masculinity and vulnerability.
Pitts and Fredericks were already dancing to Sivan Jacobovitz’s thumping score as the audience entered the studio. Their energy was high and ebullient. Dressed in red wrestling singlets-meets-fetish wear with black sneakers, the dancers shifted between social dance partnering, the down-beat steps of house dancing, and pugilistic rhythms evocative of the Muhammad Ali tactic, “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
The two men maintain some form of physical contact throughout the dance genre blending. The most striking component of Touch Of RED is the innocence in the touching. Pitts and Fredericks are able to perform touching the way that young children touch before they have a sense of any body politics. Their touching feels like bodies in contact with no ulterior motives. There was no sense of eroticism or violence or shame. It was remarkable. Their performance quality felt rare, and like a missing part of dialogues on “toxic masculinity” that are often foregone conclusions.
The touching evolved into fitting. Each dancer created negative spaces that the other filled. Contact resumed, the duo performed a pastiche of wrestling that favored effort over aggression.
Pitts danced a solo while Fredericks watched from the corner of the ring. The Gaga influence was evident in the solo as the movement quality changed from tightly choreographed to more open ended and searching. Pitts collapsed in the center. Fredericks took over in a chasse-run around the perimeter, facing the audience with arms outstretched.
The duo reunited. Grabbing each other’s faces, they kicked off their shoes, embraced each other and slowed to a rocking back and forth. Fredericks stepped onto Pitts’s feet the way children do with their parents. The pair separated.
The 45 minute showing ended. Pitts informed the audience that a full performance includes a talkback in which the duo will take time facing each quadrant of the audience questioning what the piece brought up for viewers.
Absent that opportunity, on behalf of this viewer, Touch Of RED is affecting and beautiful.
Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC’s Dance Stories.
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