Shamel Pitts: Black Velvet: Architectures and Archetypes and Bobbi Jene Smith: A Study on Effort

Shamel Pitts and Bobbi Jene Smith were sharp enough to dance with Batsheva Dance Company—and then be tapped to teach founder Ohad Naharin’s challenging Gaga contemporary dance choreography—before striking off to create their own works. This double billing for Carolina Performing Arts begins with Black Velvet: Architectures and Archetypes, a formidable work of darkness and shadows that Pitts co-created with the fierce Brazilian performance artist Mirelle Martins; the work also features light and video mapping by Lucca del Carlo.  Pitts has said the work “aims to share and reflect on the colorfulness of blackness—especially in regards to black women—in a relationship of love, compassion, and camaraderie.” Smith’s A Study on Effort, meanwhile, is an extended conversation, through choreography and music, between solo dancer Smith and violinist Kier GoGwilt, about the different forms and extremities of physical and emotional effort.