SORE, TOUCH OF RED: RECOLLECTION, and IN-PRACTICE to Make NYC Debuts with TRIBE

TRIBE, the multidisciplinary arts collective founded by MacArthur Fellow and award-winning choreographer Shamel Pitts, has announced a series of June 2026 events exploring embodiment, Afrofuturism, and collective healing.

The programming includes a world premiere of  the new multidisciplinary performance work SORE, the documentary screening Touch of RED: RECOLLECTION, and the movement workshop In-Practice, led by Shamel Pitts. Together, the events expand Pitts' ongoing artistic investigations into emotional complexity, intimacy, and transformation through dance, film, spoken word, immersive design, and communal practice. See below for event details. 

The series begins with SORE, a new live performance work by Ashley Pierre-Louis in collaboration with Dominica Greene. Developed within Shamel Pitts' Solace of RED performance art incubator, the duet explores Black Feminine Erotic Power, pleasure, love, and transformation through movement, ritual, and embodied worldbuilding. Asking how pleasure can become a site of unassailable power and collective healing, SORE creates layered echoes of transformation rooted in authenticity, sensuality, and liberation. The work features performances by Pierre-Louis and Greene, with lighting by Sarai Frazier, projection design by Lucca Del Carlo, sound collage by Tushrik Fredericks, and scenic design by Nadir Bey.

Ashley Pierre-Louis explains: “Developing SORE over the past four years through TRIBE's Solace of RED residency series has been an incredible gift. Having my first ever premiere in New York City in partnership with Shamel Pitts and TRIBE is even more profound! My partnership with them has allowed SORE the rare luxury to slowly yet deeply become itself. With each residency, the piece has evolved, matured, expanded, transformed; and I imagine it will continue to shift and reveal itself long after this premiere. For me, this duet acts as an ode to Audre Lorde, translating the profound current of the erotic as power into a physical language of our own." 

The second event, Touch of RED: RECOLLECTION, is a documentary screening directed by Taylor Antisdel, offering an intimate look into the creation and evolution of Pitts' acclaimed multidisciplinary performance work Touch of RED. Combining rehearsal footage, performance excerpts, and behind-the-scenes reflection, the film explores vulnerability, intimacy, Black masculinity, and human connection through the collaborative creative process shared by Pitts and performer Tushrik Fredericks.

The series concludes with In-Practice, an intimate movement workshop led by Pitts and grounded in his 6 Step Program of Artistic Practice and Creation Process. Through discussion, visualization, and embodied movement exercises, participants will investigate physical efficiency, expressive range, rhythm, groove, stillness, and individual expression within a communal dance environment. Pitts will also demonstrate how these principles emerge inside the rehearsal process of Touch of RED alongside collaborator Channce Williams. 

The screening and movement workshop will be held at Hi-ARTS and are free and open to the public with RSVP.

EVENT SCHEDULE

SORE

A world premiere of a duet created and performed by Ashley Pierre-Louis in collaboration with Dominica Greene

Thursday, June 4, 7 pm (Opening Reception at 8 pm)
Friday, June 5, 7 pm
Saturday, June 6, 5 pm

The Flea Theater
20 Thomas Street,  New York, NY 10007

More info: https://itsatribe.org/sore
Tickets ($25-$50): https://givebutter.com/sore

Touch of RED: RECOLLECTION

Documentary Screening directed by Taylor Antisdel, featuring Shamel Pitts & Tushrik Fredericks
Monday, June 15, 2026, 7:30 pm
FREE, RSVP required. To register, go to https://givebutter.com/tor-recollection

In-Practice

Movement Workshop with Shamel Pitts
Thursday, June 18, 2026, 7:30 pm

FREE, RSVP required. To register, go to: https://givebutter.com/hi-arts-tribe-workshop

Both held at:
Hi-ARTS
10 Lafayette Ave, 4th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11217

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

TRIBE is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary arts collective founded by MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow Shamel Pitts in December 2019. The collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is composed of international and local artists working across mediums such as movement, choreography, lighting design, video mapping projection, poetry, spoken word, cinematography, scenography, dramaturgy, costume styling, and music composition.

TRIBE's mission is cultivating a space of discovery and a platform for artists, particularly artists of color, through multidisciplinary collaboration inspired by Afrofuturism. Founded in Brooklyn in 2019 by Shamel Pitts, the collective brings together artists working across movement, choreography, digital storytelling, spoken word, scenography, music composition, cinematography, and immersive design.

Shamel Pitts, a 2024 MacArthur Fellow and 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 performances, with his multidisciplinary arts collective TRIBE, known as his “BLACK series,” as well as their newly emerging “RED series”, which has toured extensively to many festivals & 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 is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award in Choreography, a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Choreography, Knight Choreography Prize Winner, a Jacob's Pillow artist-in-residence, and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Shamel Pitts | TRIBE has been artist in residence at 92Y Harkness Dance Center and at New York Live Arts' Live Feed Creative Residency.

Ashley Pierre-Louis is originally from Miami, FL. For high school, she attended New World School of the Arts and continued her education at Florida State University, where she earned her BFA in Dance. Now based in New York City, she is a dance artist, choreographer, producer, and cook, whose practice centers pleasure through dancing, communal gathering, and food. Through her creative work, Ashley invites both herself and audiences to imagine their deepest, strongest, and richest expressions of the self, asking how we might share these collectively to cultivate freedom in both mind and body. She is a performer and creator with Shamel Pitts' multidisciplinary arts collective TRIBE, and plays a vital role in arts leadership as the Associate Producer at Performance Space New York (PS122) and Dream Partner/Program Manager for Florida State University's Arts in NYC program.Ashley has worked as dramaturg for Shamel Pitts' work Touch of RED (2024 Bessie Award Winner), as the Associate Choreographer for the play Help (2022) by acclaimed poet and playwright Claudia Rankine, directed by Taibi Magar, and commissioned at The Shed in New York. She has premiered the play Thoughts of A Colored Man by playwright Keenan Scott II and director Steve Broadnax III at Syracuse Stage and Baltimore Center Stage as well as performed for the premiere of Donna Uchizono's work March Under an Empty Reign at The Joyce: NY Quadrille Festival. She is a 2026 NYSCA grantee, a 2021 Gallim Moving Women spring artist – in – residence.

Dominica Greene is a movement-based conceptual artist, dancer, and facilitator based in Brooklyn, New York. She values dance as one of the purest forms of expression, utilizing it as an energetic entity capable of affecting real and palpable change. Her company and freelance experience is extensive, having collaborated with, performed, and toured the work of many notable choreographers domestically and internationally. She creates body and time-based work which aims to reflect movement as one of the most fundamental conduits of existential and ancestral knowledge. As a Queer, mixed-race, Guyanese-American woman, she is committed to dreaming up and worldbuilding alternative realities and more expansive futures with her BIPOC, immigrant, and LGBTQIA+ communities.

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