Shamel Pitts

Shamel Pitts is an American artist, choreographer, performer and teacher. He is the founder and artistic director at TRIBE which is a New York-based multidisciplinary arts collective. He is best known for his creation of a triptych of multidisciplinary performance art works entitled Black Series and as a cast member of the 2021 Bessie Award-winning production of The Motherboard Suite at New York Live Arts.

In 2024, Pitts was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, popularly known as the MacArthur Foundation's "Genius Award." He is also a 2026 United Starts Artists (USA) Fellow, 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2018 Princess Grace Foundation fellow, and a fellow in choreography of the New York Foundation for the Arts.