Tijen Lawton is a professional dancer, performer and teacher. She began her dance studies while living in İstanbul, later continuing at The Arts Educational School London, The Place London and The Juilliard School New York.
She has danced with i.a. Pierre Droulers, worked intensively for 15 years with Needcompany and creates also her own solo works.
Tijen is an active teacher and coach in Belgium and abroad. She coaches and assists other artists, creates group pieces with students, gives a lot of workshops (f.ex. in collaboration with Arne Sierens/Compagnie Cecilia) … She is also a regular guest teacher at Artesis AP University College / Koninklijk Conservatorium in Antwerp, ISAC (Académie Royal Des Beaux-Arts De Bruxelles) and BCDA Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy in Budapest.
She toured with numerous performances and continues creating and performing her own solo work. Constantly investigating and challenging her own body as an archive.
Currently she is touring with Mother Song directed by Mokhallad Rasem, a co-production with het Toneelhuis Antwerpen, Landestheaters St Pölte, Austria & Vereingten Bühnen Bolzano. Shortly, Tijen will be dancing and performing in Troyennes 2017-2019 choreographed by Claudio Bernardo and will be performing in the next creation of Mauro Paccagnella & Whooshing Machine
“Motivation as an artist and sharer of experience and ongoing investigative knowledge…
My never ending hunger as a professional dancer & performer to constantly learn and share with others is my motivation. The desire that carries my body and the need of ongoing challenge, confrontation and the search for intelligent thinking to nourish every layer of my emotional and physical body is my motivation.
My aim of endeavour is to keep moving, sharing and challenging myself, defining and redefining movement to find the beauty, liberation, despite the dangers and the fear… the exposing of bare energy is my motivation and questioning the internal limit of thinking as inspired by the purity and complexity of the body and the life it lives.
As an objective outside eye (audience) I am driven by instinct, human expression and emotional landscapes of the individual being and how a choreographic structure or dramaturgy supports and carries human emotion and unpredictability. I am interested in how the atmosphere of the work touches and resonates. I am much less touched by a perfect choreographic structure which guides me in what I am supposed to see. As an audience I desire to be confronted and challenged. As a result my feedback is based on instinct and the atmosphere of the emotional landscape that resonates and remains. “