Dance | VISITING PRESENTER

Shamel Pitts (former Batsheva Dance Company member), Mirelle Martins, and Lucca del Carlo present an original multidisciplinary performance work that celebrates the textures, beauty, delicacy, and power within us. In Black Velvet: Architectures and Archetypes (Audience Choice Award winner, Stockholm Fringe Festival) they share and reflect on blackness—especially in regards to black women—in a context of love, compassion, and camaraderie.

Two bodies, glowing as if made of liquid metal, explore one another’s contours in the darkness. Shaved heads and naked torsos blur the boundaries between masculine and feminine, and the dance shifts from formalized patterns to uncontrolled corporeal explosions. What does it mean to be black today? What do semi-naked bodies signal in an oversexualized society? Can they also be simply beautiful?