The Chocolate Factory
Oct 26-29 2022
Something personal.
A means of transmission.
Bearing witness.
New York Live Arts
Oct 5-8, 2022
In this new adventure Rainer juxtaposes text, dance and excerpts from the two classic films—HELLZAPOPPIN’, a 1941 Hollywood musical, and Zero for Conduct, 1933, by French auteur Jean Vigo—as backdrop and inspiration for some of her choreography.
Portland Institute of Contemporary Art
TBA Festival: 22
Portland, OR
Oct 5-8, 2022
A collaboration that investigates ways to embody the conundrum of nothingness and "being."
The New York Choral Society presents Morning Light, a multidisciplinary digital performance of composer Kevin Siegfried’s new arrangement for a cappella chorus of the Shaker song Morning Light in collaboration with artist and choreographer David Thomson.
The ecology of care is a discussion on how we can reenvision care and structures for artists and the field. Reimagining our art ecology using organic models in nature to build a more resilient and sustainable field that embraces the person and the art with care. These are some questions that have emerged through his...
I had the delicious pleasure of a summer residency here with two studios, one for writing and one for dancing.
Vs. can be considered part tribunal of evidence — guided and constrained by the statutory powers of the “Interrogator” — and part psychodynamic investigation of a sovereign polity, a collective of accused citizenry.
J. Bouey interviewed me for a short article for DanceTeacher online regarding The Sustainability Project and my course Artists Sustainability.
Marking the Occasion, the book, represents the final movement in a year-long engagement with the question, "Can a performance be a rough draft of a written work?" This publication also marks the events of 2020, and traces their reverberations through each artist's practice as time, movement, action, and collaboration take on new meanings. ...
Conceived by Daria FaÏn as a multilayered as a collaborative journey in celebration of her 60th birthday, and the culmination of 40 years of research into the body/mind embodiment within architecture, language, spirituality and communal action.
With Last Audience: a performance manual, a canary torsi reimagines performance for an era of social distance. A series of printed manuals developed in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
In September 2020, the New York Public Library's Performing Arts Division acquired the archives of Trisha Brown. I had the pleasure of collaborating with Cori Olinghouse and later Ben Houtman, as the TBC archives technical consultant, designing the database that housed the interrelated information for the ephemera of Brown's archive.
MetLiveArts in partnership with New York Live Arts, commissioned a unique, site-specific iteration of Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei's durational performance work OUR LABYRINTH.
I had the pleasure of participating in Asiya Wadud's Echo Exhibit.
My collaboration with Chia-Lun Chang chosen as one of the poems exhibited in Lower Manhattan.
One of PLATFORM 2020: Utterances from the Chorus‘s central questions “How do we weave a collective song?” builds on the ideas behind Okpokwasili’s and Born’s durational piece, Sitting On a Man’s Head.
Going Spaces and Other Worlding is the culmination of two years of residencies, research, and experimentation. Through film, performance, and sculptural
installation, Tripp uses forms of reenactment and rehearsal to conjure alternative modes of freedom, utopia, and civil disobedience at the crossroads of globalization and cultural hybridity.
Sept 21 - Dec 1, 2019
Foley Gallery
59 Orchard Street, NYC 10002
Monday through Friday 2pm-10pm | Saturday and Sunday 12pm-9pm
Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center
15-17 November 2019
DUMBO, 29 Jay Street, Bklyn
A piece centered around 12 mattresses, a 17th century American diarist and the madness of action.
The Last Audience is a work embodied by its audience–a live laboratory for the communal work of conjuring.
New York Live Arts
219 W 19th St, New York
October 16-20
6:30pm
Fridman Gallery is honored to present Abigail Levine’s Restagings No. 3: Fall (C.A.), a 10 ½ hour performance and collective ritual for a community of performers, writers, and their witnesses.
Sunday, October 13th 2pm-12:30am
Remai Modern
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Saturday, October 5, 7 PM
Sunday, October 6, 2 PM
Sorry I Missed Your Show: Adrienne Truscotted by makers David Thomson and Melanie George, will present and talk about excerpts from a show that has caused her nothing but trouble—from the humorously banal to the deeply consequential, both personally and professionally.
Gibney Dance 280 Broadway, entrance 53A chambers
Sept. 18th 6:30
Saturday, June 22, 6:30pm
Part of series of performances before the closing of The Kitchen for a 2 year renovation.
Mt. Tremper Arts Center
Watershed Lab 2019
Curated by Jaime Shearn Coan and Tara Aisha Willis. Bringing seven artists together to explore the intersection of text and performance.
Judson Memorial ChurchThursday, June 6th I have the pleasure of being honored with the wonderful Stephen Facey this year at the Movement Research Gala on June 6th. Movement Research is one of the world’s leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms, now celebrating it’s 40th year. It’s an organization that is near and dear to my heart for...
St Marks Church
Tuesday, May 7 at 6pm
Danspace’s 2019 Gala honors visionary artists Simone Forti and Okwui Okpokwasili, whose embodied grace and radical generosity inspire across generations.
New York Live Arts
April 26, 2019
Last Audience is a piece made with the audience. It grapples with questions of agency, manipulation and the complexity of choice inside a theatrical context.
French Embassy
972 Fifth Avenue
New York
April 3, 2019
I had pleasure of being invited to read a excerpt from Small Country by Gaël Faye, one of the five finalists for the prize. Translated by Sarah Ardizzone
The Dance Union Podast
Episode 42: Sustainability in Dance
Melanie and Jay met with David Hamilton Thomson to speak about his Sustainability Project that helps dance artists explore sustainable practices of making art.
Dancing While Black,
Inaugural publication
March 2019
Sharjah Biennial 14, United Arab Emirates (UAE)
Collaboration with Caecilia Tripp
5-screen film installation, copper sculpture
Museum of Modern Art
January 24, 2019 6:30p
This Studies Project traces the legacies of dance beyond Judson Dance Theater, considering the complex web of influences and developments in the years before, during, and in the many decades since.
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
2019-2021
A raucous post-modern parody of Trump and Stormy Daniels played off of Tina Turner's Proud Mary. Sex, gender, power and privilege. Everything is upended!
Sundays on Broadway
4 November 2018 6p
Movement Research at Judson
12 November 2018 8p
A conversation
Barnard College
Monday, October 22, 2018
7 PM
The Skirball Center at NYU
Monday, October 8th, 2018 6p
The New York Dance and Performance Awards, also known as The Bessies, is a yearly event celebrated the work of artists who have performed in New York City during the course of the past season. he his own mythical beast received a Bessie...
The Museum of Modern Art
September 16, 2018–February 3, 2019
MoMA opens a retrospective exhibition of the groundbreaking work, ideas and artists that came out of Judson Dance Theater. In conjunction with this exhibition are a series of performances.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Sunday, September 23, 2018 12:30 pm
For the closing of Contra la Pared, David Thomson collaborated with exhibiting artist Analia Segal to create a solo.
Dance and Process @ The Kitchen
June 9, 6pm: Athena Kokoronis and Angie Pittman
Working with Athena Kokoronis|Domestic Performance Agency and a cast of beautiful performers
May 19, 2018
9am
Paramount Theatre
1300 Ocean Avenue
Asbury Park, NJ
The 6th edition of TEDxAsburyPark will be themed ‘Passion.
Gibney Dance
280 Broadway
Tuesday, May 8
6:30-8:30p
For this Gibney event, we are focusing on younger artists of color and how they perceive a sustainable life. Each artist would present strategies and ideas that they have been using to build and guide their goals as artists within this context.
April 17, 6:30pm
Free
The sixth gathering in this year's L.A.B. series, featuring Chloë Bass, Andrianna Campbell, and David Thomson, revolving around the term relation.
RESIDENCY 30: MARCH 5-APRIL 6, 2018 The Rauschenberg Residency is a creative center that welcomes artists of all disciplines from around the world to live, work, and create. The residency is located on Robert Rauschenberg’s former property on Captiva Island, Florida, where he lived and worked for nearly four decades. The facility, which includes the 8,000-square-foot studio Rauschenberg built in 1992 and a collection of historic homes and...
These videos were created as part of the development of he his own mythical beast, which premiered at Performance Space New York in January 2018. These videos serve as complementary work to the process and performance, and as a means of reformulating research and materials as further commentary on the mythologies of race and perception. These videos were...
Performance Space 122 | COIL Festival 2018
150 First Avenue, at the corner of 9th Street
New York, NY
Jan 31 – Feb 2 7:30pm
Feb 4 3pm
The culmination of a series of performance installations that Interrogates the suppositions of neutrality of presence, and the black body in a postmodern world.
Early Works & DUST
Marseilles, France
Porto, Portugal
Barcelona, Spain
14th-19th December 2017
Gibney Dance 280 Broadway
(Enter at 53A Chambers)
Wednesday, December 6 / 6:30 – 8:00 pm / FREE
David Thomson, in discussion with Okwui Okpokwasili, connects his work with Poet/theater artist and musician Sekou Sundiata’s 51st (dream) state to his current performance research project, he his own mythical beast
New York Live Arts Studios
219 West 19th Street
DEC 4, 7PM
Do you take time to invest in yourself? Do you have access to the resources, tools and advice you need to plan a sustainable life as an individual?
Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans
New Orleans, LA
Thursday, November 9, 2017 - 7:30pm
Friday, November 10, 2017 - 7:30pm
Saturday, November 11, 2017 - 7:30pm
Saturday, November 11, 2017 - 11:00pm
Cairo International Festival for Contemporary & Experimental Theatre
Cairo, Egypt
Wednesday, September 27 at 10PM
Thursday, September 28 at 10PM
Abrons Art Center
September 17, 2017 (Constitution Day)
12pm-8pm
A Remedy for a Constitutional Crisis is an eight-hour celebratory reading of the United States Constitution. This event is free to the public and will occur in the outdoor amphitheater at Abrons Art Center on September 17, 2017 (Constitution Day)
Abrons Arts Center
The Chocolate Factory
The Invisible Dog
September 7-23, 2017
CAST, STAGE, AUTHOR is a trilogy of new works by interdisciplinary artist Yanira Castro and a team of collaborators.
Westbeth
NYC
10-21 July 2017
A short intensive period of work
St Marks Danspace Project
New York City
June 23 - July 1
Danspace Project premieres SlowDancing/TrioA, a new video installation by artist, David Michalek, in collaboration with choreographer, Yvonne Rainer!
Stamford, VT
June 2017
Marta Renzi invited Aislinn MacMaster, Charles Caster-Dudzick and myself up to the beautiful and cozy home of Marta Miller in Vermont for 5 days to shoot a little something.
The Yard
Martha's Vineyard
Chilmark, MA
22 May - 11 June 2017
A three week shared residency with Raja Feather Kelly and his company, the feath3r theory. Continued development of the final section of he his own mythical beast, with two performances at the end of the residency.
Skins and Hoods (Even Knights Get Forgotten) Mini-lab
Abrons Arts Center
3 May 2017
4p
As part of the French Play Series, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in association with Abrons Arts Center sponsored a mini-lab and a public reading of the play.
Mt Tremper Arts Center
20-25 February 2017
UC Santa Barbara
Hatlen Theater
Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - 9:00am to Saturday, January 28, 2017 - 7:30pm
Radical Bodies reunites Halprin, Forti, and Rainer for the first time in over fifty-five years.
DECEMBER 3 – 30, 2016 and January 5 – 15, 2017
Creation of new work at Barnard College, Performances at New York Live Arts, December 1-3
New Ohio Theater 5 December 2016 I had the pleasure of performing in the reading for Third annual Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights. Brigid McLeer is the recipient of the third annual Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights. In memory of Leslie Scalapino and her “commitment to the community of experimental writing...
BROOKLYN REZOUND, created by The Commons Choir in collaboration with composer Darius Jones, is an investigative musical and dance performance that delves into the history of diversity and displacement in Brooklyn.
The Voyeurs
Madison Square Park
23rd Street and Broadway
New York City
15, 16 September 2016
6p
18 September 2016
2p
he his own mythical beast
Residency
5-11 September 2016
Performance
Saturday, September 10, 8:00 pm / Tickets $15
This process version of he his own mythical beast uses new and material accumulated from prior performance installations to build a multifaceted experience engaging the edges and issues of identity, power, myth and America.
This summer I had the pleasure of working on a new project with Yanira Castro. We began with a series of extended interviews in the Spring and workshops in the Summer. CAST, STAGE, AUTHOR is a trilogy of works to premiere for three weeks in September 2017 at three commissioning NYC venues: The Chocolate Factory,...
The Voyeurs
A performance installation by David Thomson
July 23 at 5:30 & 6:30 pm
Empire Fulton Ferry at Brooklyn Bridge Park
The first comprehensive overview of 30 years of art made in response to the AIDS epidemic in the United States
Opening night performance
Wednesday, July 13th
2nd floor North Wing
7:15pm
BRIC Arts Media
July 6, 2016 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
“A thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.”
Performances by exhibition artist David Antonio Cruz, and artists Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and David Thomson that explore contradictions in identity, freedom, and materiality of the black/brown body.
River to River Festival | LMCC
River to River Festival
The Arts Center at Governors Island, Building 110
Thu, Jun 16 from 4:30–5:30pm
Fri, Jun 17 from 4:30–5:30pm
Sat, Jun 18 from 2:30–3:30pm
Sun, Jun 19 from 2:30–3:30pm
“…a (fine) place to consider existence beneath and beyond the earth, “Go Forth” finds an immediate and visceral strength in ancient codes of mourning.”
–...
The Kitchen
2-4 June 2016
8p
ADI/NYC PremiereThe Concept of Dust: Continuous Project-Altered Annually” is an ongoing work-in-progress that interweaves formal dance and personal themes of aging and mortality with humor and diverse texts
3 - 30 March 2016
The Corporation of Yaddo
Saratoga Springs, NY
February 21 - March 20, 2016
Museum of Modern Art
Artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi’s PLASTIC is a commissioned live installation in which dancers perform throughout MoMA continuously during opening hours.
1 - 29 February 2016
125 Maiden Lane Studio
7-12 January 2016
Westbeth Center
Drawing inspiration from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, GO FORTH is a performance and photo installation that considers how we create space in our lives for the presence of the absent.
10 - 20 December 2015
Thursday thru Sunday
8pm Thu-Fri-Sat, 3pm Sun
Theaterlab
357 West 36th Street, 3rd fl, New York NY 10018
(elevator)
David Thomson will lead a live interview and discussion with Nelisiwe Xaba around the political and aesthetic resonances in her work.
Got a call out of the blue to do a music video…they couldn’t tell me the name of the artist as it was extremely confidential. When I got to rehearsal and discovered who it was, it blew my mind!! It was a pleasure meeting the man & legend. He will be missed…
25 October 7pm
FIAC & Musée du Louvre / Auditorium du Louvre
Paris, France
28 October
La Cartonnerie - Friche La Belle de Mai
Marseille, France
Performances
Wednesday, September 30 through Saturday, October 03
7:30 pm
Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (Entrance at 53A Chambers)
Movement Research at Judson Church
21 September 2015
A Venus intervention...
21 August 2015
Dancing Through the Bronx
Owen Dolan Park, Bronx
August 2015
Performance Portrait: Live is an interactive, multi-channel video installation that focuses on the symbiotic relationship between performer and spectator.
26 July 2015
An informal conversation with Takahiro on aspects of aesthetics, cultural identity, practice and form.
14th July 8pm
Teatro Sociale
Como, Italy
June 9–14, 2015
The Museum of Modern Art presents the East Coast premiere of Yvonne Rainer's latest work. This ongoing work-in-progress interweaves formal dance with personal themes of aging and mortality, humor, and diverse texts—intermittently read by Rainer and the dancers—dealing with ancient Mideast dynasties, paleontological findings, and literary quotations.
Dance in Process (DiP) is the signature program of Gibney Dance’s Choreographic Center. DiP provides nuanced creative residency support for mid-career New York City-based artists.
18 May - 23 May 2015
31 August - 5 September 2015
30 November - 5 December 2015
Saturday 16 May 2015 2 to 6pm
Sunday 17 May 2015 1 to 5pm
The Invisible Dog Art Center
A durational performance installation. Entangled as we are with total freedom. A thing of immortal make, not human, snorting out the breath, the terrible flame of bright fire...
1 May 2015
Danspace Project
Charged Spaces
Daria Faïn, Massimiliano Balduzzi and Christine Bonansea Saulut
Curated by David Thomson
FOOD FOR THOUGHT is a benefit series supporting neighborhood food distribution programs. This benefit performance/canned food drive collects non-perishable items and presents new works by a range of choreographers.
21 April 2015
BRIC
As part of BRIC’s Stoop Series The Commons Choir will perform BROOKLYN REZOUND, conceived and directed by Robert Kocik & Daria Fain with another fascinating cast of performers. A sonic and physical mediation on commerce, language, and Brooklyn's history.
April 15, 2015
Live Ideas Festival
S K Y – Force and Wisdom in America Today
Portrait Studies is a commissioned pièce d'occasion directed by Beth Gill. Sharing the program with Laurie Anderson and Deborah Hay.
April 10, 11, 17, 2015
Harlem Stage Gatehouse
E-Moves Festival
Malcolm Low's
In the thrust towards the future…I want to leave something of use
3 & 4 April 2015
BRIC
Okwui Okpokwasili's Poor People's TV Room (work in progress)
Moderating a post-show artist and audience dialogue.
March 26-28, 2015
Tanz Farm
Atlanta, GA
Malcolm Low's
In the thrust towards the future…I want to leave something of use
March 19-21, 2015
Walker Arts Center
Minneapolis, MN
The final performances of BLEED
A collaboration with the artist Tony Whitfield. Initiated as a somewhat traditional interaction between photographer and model, this work represents the unexpected intersection of distinctly different artistic practices and has become phase one in a collaboration between choreographer/performance artist David Hamilton Thomson and artist/designer Tony Whitfield exploring maturation in an idiosyncratic racialized body.
February 2 - March 27, 2015
Gibney Dance Center
The recent cultural climate has shed light on the systemic conflation of violence with the black male body—bodies that are often perceived as threatening. Featuring visual artwork by performing artists Raja Feather Kelly, Jaamil Kosoko, Jumatatu Poe, Will Rawls and David Thomson (in collaboration with artist/designer Tony Whitfield),...
JAN 9 & 11, 2015
American Realness
Abrons Arts Center
New York Premiere of the third part of the quartet which culminates in BLEED. In Sister, hyper-intricate rhythmic systems provide the chatter between the performers as they are propelled into an increasingly mysterious cascade of events.
During a two-week residency at The Invisible Dog, I focused on building new material, setting a structure, creating text to overlay, and continuing to explore a 360° performance field.
March 25 ,2013
Movement Research at Judson
conceived and directed by David Thomson
performed by Anna Azrieli, Marya Wethers, Malcolm Low, Jodi Bender
June 24 ,2012
Movement Research at Judson Church
conceived & directed by david thomson
movement by david thomson
text by okwui okpokwasili
performed by david thomson & okwui okpokwasili
Premiered in April 2012 at the Théâtre de Nîmes in France, Alain Buffard’s Baron Samedi is named after a Haitian “Vaudou” spirit. A tutelary figure for the work, Baron Samedi invokes ghosts, extracts the perfect dancing body and is a symbol of visibility in life and invisibility in death. Buffard continues his longstanding connection with...
March 30 ,2012
Danspace Project
Parallels: The End
Solo conceived and performed by David Thomson
Ralph Lemon curated this closing event inviting twelve performers into a marathon event.
February 3, 2012
Roulette
a collaboration/introduction....including mayhem, desire, thoughts and consequences
One-Shot is a video relay
One-Shot is a solo performance relay for the internet curated by Sarah Maxfield and produced in collaboration with the Gibney Dance Center.
A photographer wrestles with his conscience in his small attic studio at night. In a crisis of faith, he keeps returning to his stark black-and-white images for proof that what he does matters. After a bath, image and reality merge into a new beginning. By Marta Renzi, with David Hamilton Thomson, camera Jake Goldwasser, photos...
After my father passed away a friend, Warren Muller, invited me to stay with him in the Poconos to heal and breathe. He introduced me to James Brown, who ran a store out there. He closed the shop early and took us to Bear Lake for a swim. This is a document of a...
from Sekou Sundiata's 51st (dream) state (2006)
51st (dream) State is nationally acclaimed poet Sekou Sundiata’s contemplation of America’s national identity, power in the world and guiding mythologies. The work, which Sundiata imagined as his poetic and personal “State of the American Soul Address,” explores how America defines itself in a new era characterized by unprecedented...
51st (dream) State is nationally acclaimed poet Sekou Sundiata’s contemplation of America’s national identity, power in the world and guiding mythologies.
from Sekou Sundiata's 51st (dream) state
Conceived and written by Sekou Sundiata
Here is a sample of some footage from some tests we did at Ohio State University’s Lab while working on Bebe Miller’s Landing/Place.
This project was inspired by an issue of 2wice Magazine and the desire to revisit the meaning of home. I created the blueprint and designed a series of houses with an inserted ‘welcome mat’ the would unroll to reveal the text as you followed the pointing finger. These homes were made and then sent off to...
In January 1984, I was working at a German engineering company as a secretary...