Tom Pearson is a Bessie Award winning choreographer working in a variety of media that includes contemporary dance, site-specific performance, film, visual art, and large-scale installations. Each work introduces its own movement and/or visual vocabulary, defined by the parameters of the subject and performance environment. Through the lens of a contemporary movement vocabulary, he creates dense, evocative worlds that illuminate the transient and the transformational, using movement abstracted from and coupled with everyday action. Paired with this is a fierce percussive abandon, often complimented by meditative nuance. Likewise, Pearson uses art installation to achieve rich, multi-dimensional environments, and site-specific explorations seek to mine public spaces for hidden meaning and to capture and engage unwary and unsuspecting passersby.

He has been commissioned to create original work by Danspace Project; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation; and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), among others. Additionally, his work has been been presented in New York by Dance Theater Workshop (DTW); La Mama ETC; the National Museum of the American Indian; Dixon Place; with The Thunderbird Indian Dancers at Theater for the New City; The New York International Fringe Festival; and Dance New Amsterdam, to name a few. Tom has been supported with residencies from LMCC; the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center; DTW; Epiphany Theater Compnay; and Swarthmore College.

Tom Pearson is Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects, a collective of artists based in New York City. He received his MA in Performance Studies from New York University/Tisch School of the Arts, and his BFA in Dance and BA in Literature from Florida State University. He has taught as an Adjunct Professor of Dance at the Florida School of the Arts; as a movement instructor for Opera Workshop at LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts (through New York City Opera's Arts-in-Education program); as the Dance Program Coordinator at the Award-winning LEVELS teen center in Long Island; through master classes at Swarthmore College and Florida State University; and in a variety of other programs. Pearson's writings on dance have been published in Dance Magazine, Dance Spirit, Time Out New York Kids, and several online publications. In addition to his work in the contemporary arts, Tom also participates in traditional American Indian events as a dancer and singer.

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