Very few people get to call themselves a genius. But dancer and choreographer Shamel Pitts earned that title when <a href="https://www.queerty.com/meet-the-black-queer-creatives-who-just-won-the-genius-award-20241008" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.queerty.com/meet-the-black-queer-creatives-who-just-won-the-genius-award-20241008">he was named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow</a>. His honor, widely known as a Genius Grant, recognizes the intrinsic way the artist approaches his performances. Pitts sees dance as a tool for world-building in the eyes of the beholder. The Brooklyn native incorporates cinematography, lighting design, video art, video-mapping projection technologies, and electronic music composition. A classically-trained dancer, with a focus on the somatic dance form Gaga, Pitts has shared his talents from New York City and Tel Aviv to Boston and São Paolo. Through his own art collective called TRIBE, Pitts has developed the series <em>BLACK</em>, which explores Blackness from the outside looking in, and <em>RED</em>, which centers the multitude of experiences and relationships within the Black identity. — J.S.M.