“haunting, hallucinatory, and profoundly intimate” – VOGUE

Tom Pearson’s multimedia work—in poetry and performance, dance, theater, film, and art—combines material culture and audience-centered narratives using ritual and performance to investigate identity and belonging, loss and reclamation, exile and refuge. His mixed media projects are often site-specific, immersive, and interactive, and he frequently collaborates with other artists. His dense and evocative poetry offers surreal and frequently haunting imagery that has been described as both “vastly panoramic and deeply personal” (Kirkus Reviews), and his critically-acclaimed works for theater have been lauded for their ability to craft “dreamscape[s] where the judgments and classifications of the waking mind are inoperative, and where the single self keeps splitting and blurring” (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).

Performance

“Exacting, exuberant choreography” – The New York Times

Performance Highlights

Scroll to bottom for more performance works and other projects.

Poetry

“Above all, Pearson demonstrates a mastery of imagery.” — Publisher’s Weekly

Published Works

New poems, published in 2025, have appeared in The Arlington Literary Journal, Alocasia Literary Magazine, and 3Elements Literary Review. New poems also appear in Writings. Below are full-length works, currently available.

About Tom

“Wildly imaginative” – The New Yorker

Tom Pearson is an award-winning, American multimedia theater artist, choreographer, and poet. Tom is founder and co-artistic director of the New York City-based performance company, Third Rail Projects, co-creator of its long-running off-Broadway hits, Then She Fell and The Grand Paradise, and director for the Global Performance Studio, a program for cultural listening and exchange. Tom holds a Master of Arts degree in Performance Studies from New York University. He has been noted for his “exacting, exuberant choreography” and for his “vastly panoramic and deeply personal” poetry.

Read More About Tom Pearson…

Visual Art

“Mesmeric and enveloping… stunning visual multimedia” — Kirkus Reviews

Exhibition Highlights

 Third Rail Projects

Creators of site-specific dance, immersive theater, and experiential performance

Tom Pearson began his artistic life in New York City in 1994 as a dancer at Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham. During the 90’s, he studied literature and choreography at Florida State University and later, Performance Studies at NYU. In 1999, while dancing for others, he began showing his own choreographic works, notably at Theater of the Riverside Church and at The Bridge for Dance on Broadway. In summer of 2001, he showed his first work under the auspices of Third Rail Dance on a shared program with Zach Morris in The New York International Fringe Festival. Later that year, he officially founded Third Rail Dance with Brian Weaver and Jennine Willett. In 2007, Third Rail Dance was reconfigured as Third Rail Projects, as it is known today, with co-directors Zach Morris and Jennine Willett. Since then, Third Rail Projects has gone on to become one of the foremost groups creating site-specific, immersive, and experiential performance in New York City and around the country and the world.

“The artists of Third Rail are masters of the skewed perspective."

— Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Both critically acclaimed and an audience favorite, Third Rail Projects’ catalog of work has received widespread recognition for their contribution to site-specific and immersive theater formats, garnering such prestigious awards as two New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards, a Chita Rivera Award for Choreography, and a Drama Desk Awards Nomination for Unique Theatrical Experience. Third Rail Projects has also been recognized as part of the creative team of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning virtual reality adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Wolves in the Walls and as contributors and featured artists in the Emmy Award-winning series IMMERSIVE.WORLD by ALL ARTS. In 2016, the artistic directors were named among the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn Culture by Brooklyn Magazine.

More at Third Rail Projects

 

GPS/X

“a true cross-cultural exchange” – Susan Katz, CEC ArtsLink

A black and white photo of two people, with a woman in the foreground facing sideways and a man in the background looking forward.

Global Performance Studio

A Program for Cultural Listening & Exchange + Process & Performance

The Global Performance Studio & eXchange, led by Tom Pearson, is dedicated to creating work through collaboration, sharing the site-specific and experiential performances practices of Third Rail Projects, and engaging with communities around the world. GPS/X cultivates opportunities to foster diplomacy through shared practice, dialogue, and community building, all within a framework of cultural listening and peer-to-peer artist exchange. To-date, GPS/X has worked with artists in the United States, Hong Kong, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, Italy, and Russia. Learn More…

Film

Over 25 Awards in more than 40 Film Festivals Worldwide

Films Available to Stream

More Projects

Further Performance Engagements, Residencies, and Other Activity

  • New Futures Project

    2024 | Artist Residency | Tom Pearson (U.S.) and Daria Karpova (Russia) | Flux Factory, NY

  • Calder Moves

    2024 | Immersive Music Concert with Flex Ensemble | Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany

  • The Night Garden

    2018/2022 | Film | Global Performance Studio through collaborations in St. Petersburg, Russia

  • Sketch Model Program

    2019-2020 | Creative-in-Reference / Artist Residency | Olin College of Engineering, Needham, Massachusetts

  • Passaggio

    2019 | Experimental Film Short | Official Selection, Mobile Dance Film Festival

  • Bogliasco Foundation

    Spring 2019 | Fellowship in Theater | Artist Residency, Bogliasco, Italy

  • Wesleyan University

    2018-2019 | Artist-in-Residence, Center for the Arts, Middletown, Connecticut

  • This Between Shadow

    2019 | Immersive Performance | Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut

  • Grove

    2017 | Visiting Artist Residency and Performances | Texas A&M University, College Station, TX

  • Break the Wall

    2018 | Immersive Theater Workshops | China Dream Entertainment, Shanghai, China

  • Genuine Plastic Reliquaries

    2015 | Site-Specific Performance | Arts Brookfield at Grace Plaza and One New York Plaza, NYC

  • House No. 17

    2015| Artist-in-Residence | Governors Island, New York

  • Recess

    2014 | Site-specific Dance Performances | Global Performance Studio with CEC ArtsLink’s Art Prospekt Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia

  • Anthem

    2014 | Site-specific Immersive Performances | SUNY Oswego and the Fort Ontario Historic Site, Oswego, NY

  • Yolk

    2014 | Site-specific Performances | Arts Brookfield at Grace Plaza, NYC

  • Marrow

    2013 | Site-specific Dance Performances | with Island Moving Company at The Steelyard, Providence, Rhode Island

  • Memento Mori

    2013 | Site-specific Immersive Performances on Tour | with Winkel & Balktick and Espolòn in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York

  • Brooklyn Beat Festival

    2013 | Untitled Site-specific Durational Performances | Brooklyn Museum, New York

  • Fountain

    2013 | Site-specific Dance Performance | ArtBat Fest, Almaty, Kazakhstan

  • Roadside Attraction

    2013 | Site-specific Dance | Arts Brookfield at Brookfield Place & on Tour through New York State Dance Force

  • Looking Glass

    2011 | Site-specific Dance | Arts Brookfield in NY at Brookfield Place, One New York Plaza, and Zuccotti Park, and in LA at Bank of American Plaza

  • Bathing Aiperi

    2013 | Workshops & Immersive Performance | CEC ArtsLink & Capacity Building Foundation, Kyrgyzstan

  • Gustav

    2011 | Site-specific Immersive Dance Performance | Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Tivoli, New York

  • Undercurrents & Exchange

    2010 (Part 2) | Two Weeks of Daily Serial Site-specific Performances | Arts Brookfield, Brookfield Place, New York

  • Beautiful Dreamer

    2010 | Site-specific Immersive, Durational, Looped Performances | Hudson Opera House, Hudson, New York

  • Walking in Two

    2010 | Dance Theater Performance | Dance New Amsterdam, New York

  • The One You Love Is Sick

    2010 | Site-specific, Immersive Dance Performance | Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation

  • Undercurrents & Exchange

    2009 (Part 1) | Month-long Daily Episodic and Serial Site-specific Dance Performances | Arts Brookfield, Brookfield Place, New York

  • Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

    2010 | Site-specific Dance Performance | Inside Out Stage at Jacob’s Pillow, Becket, Massachusetts

  • Steampunk Haunted House

    2009-2011 | Immersive Theater Performances | Abrons Arts Center, New ork

  • The Witness Project

    2009 | Dance Theater Performances | La MaMa E.T.C. and Museum of the American Indian, NY

  • Live at the Gantries

    2009 | Site-specific Dance Performance | Long Island City, Queens, NYC

  • Rub the Sleep

    2007 | Dance Theater Performances | La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, NYC

  • Strangers on Tong Chong Street

    2007 | Site-Specific Dance Performances | Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation and Swire Properties, Hong Kong

  • Seatbelt

    2006 | Dance Performance | La MaMa Moves!, La MaMa E.T.C., NYC

  • Squall

    2006 | Dance Theater Performance | Dance Theater Workshop, New York

  • Lacuna

    2006 | Site-specific Dance | Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, New York

  • REEL

    2005 | Site-specific Performances | Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s SiteLines series and Museum of the American Indian, NY

  • Beehive

    2006 | Site-specific Dance Performances | 40Forward at Dance Theater Workshop, NY

  • Screaming Shrubbery

    2005 | Dance Theater Performances | Merce Cunningham Studio, NYC

  • Ceremony

    2003 | Dance Theater Performances | Merce Cunningham Studio, NYC

  • Uktena

    2001 | Dance Theater Performances | Merce Cunningham Studio, NYC

  • Cénotaphe

    2001 | Dance Performance | The Bridge for Dance on Broadway, NYC

  • Ascending Silence

    2000 | Dance Performance | The Bridge for Dance on Broadway, NYC

  • Through the Keyhole

    1999 | Dance Performance | Theater of the Riverside Church, NYC