Laila J. Franklin: BABYBABYBABY
Friday, August 28, 2026, 7:00pm: Opening Night Performance & After Party featuring Dragons Dance/Erin Yen, Johnny Huy Nguyễn, and Laila J. Franklin presenting BABYBABYBABY from Boston, MA and DJing the dance floor post-show!
Saturday, August 29, 2026, 3:30pm
A dance about dances about love.
Interested in the human impulse for connection, BABYBABYBABY (2024) (West Coast Premiere) taps into feelings of budding romance, when falling in love is silly and fast and sexy and devastating and you are brilliant and stupid and spellbound. With reference points ranging from early aughts romantic comedies and So You Think You Can Dance duets, to archival footage of live performances by Roberta Flack and Nina Simone, to obstacle course TV game shows and clowning, the work stumbles through shades of silliness, irrationality, passion, and grief. It calls into question the role of sincerity, earnestness and truthfulness in performance, and the power of physical states.
BABYBABYBABY seeks to explore how we contend with the precarity of trust, impulsivity, and continuity via flexible agreements and disagreements, in its physical acts and overarching theme. It is a work interested in companionship and partnership, exploring the ways we give and receive care.
BABYBABYBABY is the grand gesture Franklin is committing.
Saturday, August 29 at 10am - Moves for Lovers: Experiments in Partnership and Performance with BABYBABYBABY dancers Sarah Pacheco and Sasha Peterson.
This workshop will explore the ethos and thematic drive of dancing with love in mind (and heart). Working through improvisation and release-based contemporary forms, you’ll dance with, to, and for one another, sharpening performance skills while also deepening our capacity for care.
Laila J. Franklin is an independent, multidisciplinary dance artist based in Boston, MA by way of Washington, DC. Featured as one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” (2024), Laila's work addresses meta-commentary, deconstruction, and bits, approaching themes surrounding the human experience with complexity, nuance, curiosity, and humor. Her work has been commissioned by Brown University, Salem State University, and Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and shared through Motion State Arts (RI), The Philadelphia Fringe Festival (PA), Public Space One (IA), Loculus Collective’s Sideways Door Festival (MA), Cotuit Dance Festival (MA), School of Contemporary Dance and Thought (MA), and Movement Research at The Judson Church (NY). Her performance credits include projects with Miguel Gutierrez, Stephanie Miracle, and Melinda Jean Myers. Laila holds an MFA from the University of Iowa, a BFA from The Boston Conservatory, and is a proud alumna of Duke Ellington School of the Arts.
@la.frank
This work was developed with the support of the Boston Center of the Arts, Boston Dance Alliance, New England Foundation for the Arts, Boston Conservatory at Berklee Alumni Programs, and generous donations from patrons.
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ODC offers a limited number of free and/or lower-cost Art Access tickets to every ODC presented performance. For most performances in B. Way Theater, twenty tickets are allocated to the Arts Access tiers. These additionally subsidized tickets, available on a first-come, first-serve basis, are reserved for those for whom price is a barrier. Please contact boxoffice@odc.dance if you or your organization is interested in underwriting the cost of additional Arts Access tickets.
About the Theater
ODC Theater exists to empower and develop innovative artists. It participates in the creation of new works through commissioning, presenting, mentorship and space access; it develops informed, engaged and committed audiences; and advocates for the performing arts as an essential component to the economic and cultural development of our community. This 170-seat venue is the site of over 150 performances a year involving nearly 1,000 local, regional, national and international artists.
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