The lobby filled with the heat of many bodies on April 8 for closing night of Shamel Pitts|TRIBE’s Touch of Red, the first program of the MCA’s spring On Stage series on Blackness and movement, Frictions, curated by Tara Aisha Willis. By the spiral staircase, the short film Touch of Red: Overture plays on a loop, introducing the dancers (choreographer Pitts and Tushrik Fredericks) in intensely lit interior scenes that offer a glimpse of solitude and togetherness. Color manifests in many ways: the red of a laser pointer, of red paint peeling from the walls, of fire, the cool blue of figures dancing on television screens stacked to the ceiling—hues that reflect on their burnished skin and seem to slice right through their bodies as they step into a pyramid of piercing vermilion light to meet in an embrace.
The performance continues down the stairs. First the intense bright white of the stairwell and basement walls, painted letters indicating preparators’ woodshop, dressing rooms, and other spaces for work and repose in the bowels of this place, then the dark cavern of the stage, where the audience is led through the wings to sit three-deep on four sides of a cinnabar red box (designed by Mimi Lien). Here Pitts and Fredericks are grooving together in scarlet unitards (designed by Dion Lee) that operate in layers to mimic muscle and sinew—also amply on view in the flesh—and black shoes, which are described as “gloves” in the program notes.
In this work, inspired by boxing, lindy hop, and male athletic competition according to Pitts, proximity is at play. The dancers begin near but not touching, and initially the movement is relentless, continuous, confined, and repetitive, as is the deafening pulse of Sivan Jacobovitz’s score. First contact is hand-to-hand, arms forming a loop that connects and tests the distance of arm’s length, as the feet step rapidly in pivoting skips that promenade them through the space. A projection (by Lucca del Carlo) of black lines first appears as markings on the floor, drawing attention to the dancers’ shadows on the same surface, which double to show four bodies joined as one, a continuously evolving Rorschach inkblot. Slowly the projection fills the space and marks the bodies like scars and bruises, before morphing into something softer, a substance between the surface of Jupiter, a lava lamp, and a fire.
In this environment, they begin to breathe on each other, an act that is sometimes aggressive, sometimes playful, as it brings mouth near face, shoulder, torso. A brief and silly thumb war shifts into another game that mixes aggression and affection: how close can you get to an embrace without touching? And finally, when contact can’t be avoided any longer, a rapid series of relationships results in the eros and humor in the rapid shift of hugs/wrestling holds—hand to armpit, head to knee, foot to neck, varieties of spoons, clutching, contortion.
When the “gloves” come off, the toenails are manicured and gleaming, and the movements evolve in the fatigue of their bodies: one might rest as the other continues. The surrounding audience is sometimes lit, sometimes haloed from behind, sometimes washed in red, sometimes darkened enough to vanish. Pitts does a headstand in a black hole of a projection. Fredericks circles the ring with a fencer’s light step, and on maybe his third lap the walls of the box collapse outwards with a thud. He kicks out the stools in the corners—where at times they sit to take rest and drink water, regarding each other from the length of the hypotenuse of the square of the ring.
Suddenly it is over, and post-applause, they come to each side of the ring and sit side by side, deflating their stools each time and releasing the tension with softly spoken stories—of schoolyard games, of dancing. “It was so grimy, I knew I was in the right place,” says Fredericks. “Please feel free to leave us,” says Pitts in parting.
Frictions continues 4/27-4/30 with [siccer] by Will Rawls, which incorporates dance, photography, and sound in an examination of “blackness and image-making” (Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM). It continues Sat 5/6 with Barak adé Soleil’s SHIFT, a performance event presented in conjunction with his video installation in a public stairwell of MCA (5/2-6/19). The installation “amplifies the presence of Black neurodiverse and disabled bodies.” The performance on 5/6 (1-5 PM) features “a promenade of disability community members” who will traverse inaccessible staircases as part of a reflection on, and resistance to, simplistic depictions of Black disabled bodies. For information and reservations, see visit.mca.chicago.org.