David Thomson

David Thomson is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice borders on choreography and installations centered around questions of identity, unconscious narratives, and the expression of presence and absence as performative states.

He has been supported or presented by The Kitchen, Movement Research, Roulette, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, BRIC Arts, Gibney, Performance Space NY, The Invisible Dog, Mt Tremper Arts, The Yard and St Marks Danspace Project, and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council among other institutions.

Thomson is the recipient of awards and grants, including a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Artist Award (2022), New York State Council on the Arts Grant (2022) and a MAP Fund Grant (2014) and Jerome Foundation Grant (2015). His work has also been recognized with New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for Sustained Achievement (2001) and for Outstanding Production for he his own mythical beast (2018).

He has been awarded residencies and fellowships, including  the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2018); a Yaddo Residency (2016); a MacDowell Fellowship (2014); a Gibney DiP Dance in Process Residency (2013, 2015); a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography (2013); and the United States Artists Ford Fellowship (2012). He is currently a Mabou Mines Associate Artist and Danspace Artist Research Fellow. 

Thomson has worked across the fields of music, dance, film, theater, and performance with Bebe Miller, Jane Comfort, Trisha Brown, Ralph Lemon, Tracie Morris, Clarinda Mac Low, Marina Abramović, Meg Stuart, Alain Buffard, Reggie, Wilson, David Roussève, Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Sekou Sundiata, Maria Hassabi, David Bowie, Lee Mingwei/Bill T Jones, Yanira Castro, Kaneza Schaal and Okwui Okpokwasili, among others.  He has performed downtown, Off-Broadway and in London with the Drama Desk-nominated a capella performance group, Hot Mouth, founded by Grisha Coleman, Jonathan Stone, Viola Sheely and Thomson.

Thomson has served on the faculties of Movement Research, NYU, Sarah Lawrence, The New School, Barnard, Bennington, and Middlebury.  He is currently a Visiting Professor in Performance and Performance Studies at Pratt Institute.

He has worked as an Arts Administrator and/or Database Consultant for several organizations including Random House, New York Foundation for the Arts, Merce Cunningham Foundation, Dieu Donné Papermill, National Performance Network, Movement Research, and developed the Archive database for the Trisha Brown Company. An ongoing advocate for dance and the empowerment of artists, he was one of the founding members of Dancer’s Forum and has served on the boards of Bebe Miller/Gotham Dance, Dance Theater Workshop and New York Live Arts.

In 2017, he and Kate Watson-Wallace initiated The Sustainability Project, which serves as a platform for expanding the discourse surrounding financial, artistic, and personal empowerment within the arts community.

Thomson began dancing at Haverford/Bryn Mawr Colleges and received and interdisciplinary B.A. from State University of New York at Purchase.