BLACK VELVET – Architectures and Archetypes is an Award Winning multidisciplinary performance art work created and premiered by Shamel Pitts, Mirelle Martins and Lucca del Carlo in Nov/2016.
BLACK VELVET is a celebration of the many textures, beauty, delicacy, and power within us. It is an art piece that aims to share and reflect on the colorfulness of blackness -especially in regards to black women- in a relationship of love, comradery, and compassion.
This work researches and shares the sensibility of ideals, models, systems, and structures as a projection of self. The dealing within these structures of systems is to discover what is inside of us, between us and around us. To hopefully bridge the distances so that we can see and meet each other. Some systems must be broken, re imagined, in order to reconstruct. .
BLACK VELVET received the Audience Choice Award at the Stockholm Fringe Festival 2017, Best Out of Town Production by ArtsATL (2018), and 2 Prizes at Machol Shalem Dance Festival (2017).
Artistic Team
Creation and Performance: Shamel Pitts and Mirelle Martins
Choreography: Shamel Pitts
Light Artist and Video Mapping: Lucca Del Carlo
Costume Designer: David Gap, Naomi Maaravi
Audio: Tentáculo Áudio (Ed Côrtes)
Graphic Design: Idan Epshtein
Artistic Manager: Elizabeth Schmuhl
International Communications: Katherina Vasiliadis
Photos and Videos: Mauricio Pisani, Alex Apt, Wilian Aguiar, Rebecca Stella, Itai Zwecker
A haunting duet
Siobhan Burke, The New York Times
