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LAJ is a movement performance artist, community-based curator/organizer, an inter-arts collaborator, and embodied researcher. For her elegantly daring offerings, LAJ has earned a New York Dance and Performance | Bessie nomination, Leeway Transformation Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Some of her most recent artistic engagements and projects include a feature film and virtual ceremony titled Revivals of Blackness (2021) commissioned by World Cafe Live, Olney Embrace Project Revival Walks (2020/2021) commissioned by Olney Culture Lab, Modupúe | Ibaye: The Yoruba Performance Project commissioned by Intercultural Journeys and supported by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage (2017-2019), and commissioned work titled we all gon’ die into revivals for Red Clay Dance in Chicago, IL (2021). Her intricately archived and most essential professional experiences over her career have been in performance, practice, and guidance with nia love, Margo Blake, Akosua Graham, Dr. Nzinga Metzger, Christal Brown | Inspirit, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and the Urban Bush Women family, Barak Ade Sole, Moustapha Bangoura, Sulley Imoro, Anssumane Silla, Ronald K. Brown, Dandha Da Hora, Jelon Viera, Ediluesa Santos, Iya Oyin Hardy, and Mama Dorothy Wilkie.

LAJ is also the Associate Artistic Director of Brownbody, a St. Paul Minnesota-based organization that manifests embodied blackness on ice and on stage. She earned a B.S. at University of Florida, an M.F.A. at Florida State University, a Ph.D. at Texas Woman’s University, and is the Director of Dance at Bryn Mawr College. LAJ was born and raised in the wonderful Tallahassee (a Muskogee word for old fields), FL and is based in Philadelphia, PA. She would like to give honor to her ancestors known and unknown…black folks who worked and fertilized the land we know live on and the economy we rely on. LAJ thanks her parents for always being good with her artistry and is enormously grateful for the continual grounding support offered by her sister, her life partner, the young kinds she is honored to collectively raise, her committed dear loves, her sister, nieces, and nephews.