Laja Field
Q: What has dance taught you that you have applied to your everyday life and how you engage in the world?
How to be in the present and adapt. Everything in life is a live performance in a way and when things go wrong how do you take them and keep going. I love the spatial awareness aspect of walking through life. I have always found it interesting to weave through people. There’s one thing that I wish would cross over more from dance: I am very clumsy. My dad used to tell me how are you a dancer and still so clumsy? I think dance and the partnership I have with Martin has taught me to take things less personally and to laugh, to not take life so seriously, to savor the moments that we have. I think that is something I always loved about live performance; it is so fleeting and that is both beautiful and sad, and so is life.
Laja Field is a performer, teacher and creator based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Currently teaching at West High School as a paraprofessional Laja is also the co-director of LAJAMARTIN physical dance theatre and continues to travel with the company. Originally from SLC, Laja holds a BFA in dance from the University of Utah 2012. She credits her childhood education and deep love of dance to Miss Pearl and the Life Arts Center as well as her high school dance teacher, Sofia Gorder. In college, Laja performed works by Martha Graham directed by Kaye Richards, Satu Hummasti, Abby Fiat, Eric Handman and Kendra Portier among others. While in school she also performed with the company RawMoves for several years and reveled in the making and performing of “The Story of Eight”. Laja first began her professional career abroad with Johannes Wieland at the Staatstheater Kassel, Germany. During the almost four years at the Theater she had the pleasure of working with many inspiring colleagues, guest teachers, rehearsals directors and guest choreographers such as, Stella Zannou, Evangelos Poulinas, Ryan Mason, Michael Langeneckert, Chris Haring/Liquid Loft (for a piece also performed in Vienna for ImpulsTanz 2013) as well as the re-staging of Hofesh Schechter’s “DOG” under the direction of Sita Ostheimer. Highlights also include the creation and performing in pieces such as “Ich Bin Du”, “100,000 Superstars” and “Science!Fiction!Now!” by Johannes Wieland. In 2015, Laja relocated to NYC as a founding member of VIM VIGOR Dance Company and traveled to teach, perform and co-create throughout the U.S and Canada for three consecutive years at Springboard Danse Montréal. With the company, Laja performed shows in NYC, Santa Barbara with DanceWORKS and toured to Prisma Festival in Panama. Independently Laja has had the pleasure of teaching at, Gibney Dance in NYC, NYU Tisch, BYU, University of Utah, CalArts, CSULB, UCLA, MOVE NYC, Early Mosley’s Institute of the Arts, Newcastle College, Prisma Festival in Panama, Artist Commons in Brussels, Contemporary Prostor Pro Tanec in Prague, Bad Lemons in Munich, b12 festival in Berlin and for companies, Abraham in Motion and Johannes Wieland. In 2017, Laja and partner Martin Durov created their own platform LAJAMARTIN physical dance theatre and have taught, performed and/or created work in 11 countries world-wide. Laja looks forward to more opportunities of bringing LAJAMARTIN’s vivacious work to life locally in SLC as well as to new communities abroad.