BLACK VELVET - Architectures and Archetypes
TRIBE presents the 10th-anniversary celebration of BLACK VELVET, the award-winning live performance created by Shamel Pitts.
BLACK VELVET is a dovetailing of texture, beauty, delicacy, and power within “a poetics of being” (Kevin Quashie). A deeply reflective performance, it explores the colorfulness of Blackness—especially in regard to Black women—through a relationship of love, camaraderie, and compassion.
Originally premiering on November 11, 2016, in São Paulo, Brazil, BLACK VELVET toured internationally across nine countries between 2017 and 2020. This transformative tour served as the foundational blueprint for TRIBE, the multidisciplinary performing arts collective founded by Pitts in 2019.
“BLACK VELVET is a texture of material. The title has to do with a nuanced research and sharing of the qualities between the two performers as well as the relationship to the viewer. BLACK VELVET can be a very soft and delicate material but also extremely powerful due to its ability to absorb light and reflect very little back … I created a world in BLACK VELVET where we can both exist and thrive as we take care of each other. The lines between masculinity, femininity, love, color, sex all seem to blur. We take care of each other and there becomes enough room for both of us to be … and this creates the oneness of our relationality and co-existence.” —Shamel Pitts (Milk.xyz)