Since he left his dancing post at Batsheva in 2016, Shamel Pitts has been working in series: first a Black trilogy, now a Red. For Marks of Red—the second trilogy’s final piece, commissioned by Minneapolis’s renowned Walker Art Center—”four words came into my heart: butoh, sumo, techno, womb.” The MacArthur Genius Awardee’s deliberately anti-climactic dance gains traction in the unlikeliness of this foursome. Combining butoh’s glacial interior implosions with sumo’s fleshy grapples and techno’s industrial heartbeat, the female sextet emulates both the womb and the evolving creature inside. Pitts relies on fellow members of Tribe, his art collective, to bring a visual and aural consistency to the work: fellow MacArthur award-winner Mimi Lien’s crisp, profound set designs; Sivan Jacobovitz’s rough, loose club music; and the amniotic bath of Lucca Del Carlo’s light projections. —Apollinaire Scherr

Catch Part 2 of the Red Trilogy at Jacob’s Pillow, June 24–28.