The ballet at the center of the San Francisco Dance Film Festival's opening night has already had two lives in the theater, and neither went according to plan. On Friday, Oct. 23, the festival opens at the Lucasfilm Premier Theater, 1 Letterman Drive, with a screening of "Nureyev" — a live performance capture of the Staatsballett Berlin production, billed as its United States premiere — followed by a live Q&A with members of the creative team. The program begins at 7 p.m.
The work traces the life of Rudolf Nureyev, the Soviet-born dancer who defected to the West and became one of the most famous performers of the 20th century. It was choreographed by Yuri Possokhov in collaboration with stage director Kirill Serebrennikov, with a score by composer Ilya Demutsky. Possokhov's connection to the Bay Area runs deep: he spent years as a principal dancer and then a choreographer at San Francisco Ballet, where he is now choreographer-in-residence.
The ballet's first life was at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, and it was nearly stillborn. In 2017, the Bolshoi canceled the world premiere shortly before opening night, after Serebrennikov was questioned in a criminal embezzlement probe. He was placed under house arrest that August in a case that supporters, and much of the international cultural community, called politically motivated — a crackdown on an artist known for liberal and LGBTQ-friendly views. The Bolshoi cited an under-rehearsed cast, but speculation centered on the ballet's treatment of Nureyev's homosexuality; Russian state news agency TASS quoted a source close to the culture ministry raising concerns about the ballet's gay themes. When "Nureyev" finally opened in December 2017, it did so without its director in the building. Audience members told the Agence France-Presse they had come to opening night partly to show support for him, and the performance drew a standing ovation.
Its second life was shorter. The ballet was permanently removed from the Bolshoi's repertoire in 2022, after Russia expanded its so-called gay propaganda law. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that Bolshoi director Vladimir Urin said some scenes could be regarded as LGBT propaganda. Staatsballett Berlin notes that Nureyev's relationships and his open expression of his homosexuality are part of the ballet's narrative — which is precisely what made the work untenable on a Russian stage. Serebrennikov has lived in exile in France and Germany since.
That is how a ballet about a dancer who left the Soviet Union ended up being staged in Berlin. Staatsballett Berlin became the first company outside Russia to mount the work, in 2026, with a cast featuring David Soares as Nureyev and Iana Salenko as Margot Fonteyn, according to Seen and Heard International. The film screening in San Francisco is a live capture of that production, recorded in March 2026 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and directed by Myriam Hoyer; Bel Air Media produced it in co-production with ZDF and ARTE. It runs 122 minutes. The company has further performances scheduled from April 23 through May 17, 2027.
The Q&A afterward is where the evening's real draw lies. The festival lists composer Ilya Demutsky and co-stager Dana Genshaft onstage, moderated by SFDFF artistic director Garen Scribner, while the Chronicle reports that Serebrennikov is also expected to take part. Genshaft is herself a former San Francisco Ballet dancer, which gives the conversation a local thread running back through Possokhov's years in the company.
The festival itself has a similar homegrown origin. It was founded in 2010 by Greta Schoenberg, a Northern California dancer who performed with the Norwegian National Ballet and later taught at ODC, City Ballet School and the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts. The festival grew out of her own turn toward filmmaking after a professional dance career, and it now draws hundreds of international submissions each year; Schoenberg remains its associate director of programming. Scribner, who took the artistic helm, is a former San Francisco Ballet soloist of ten years and the director behind the 2025 documentary "Tiler Peck: Suspending Time."
Opening night is only the start. The festival runs through Nov. 8, with roughly 80 dance films across 18 in-person screenings at venues including the Delancey Street Theater, Catherine Clark Gallery, Shack15 and Brava Theater, before the program streams worldwide from Nov. 9 through Nov. 30. Among the titles: "The People's Palace," filmed in 2024, captures aerial choreographer Joanna Haigood's site-specific dance inside San Francisco City Hall's rotunda; "My Benjamin" offers a double portrait of Paris Opera Ballet star Benjamin Perch and Mexico-based director Victoria Clay Mendoza; and "Otter Lake" has its world premiere, following choreographer Emma Portner, who has worked with major companies and with pop artists including Justin Bieber and FKA twigs.
Single tickets for the festival run $20 to $125, and festival passes $35 to $175. The opening-night screening and Q&A sit at the low end of that range — a seated, ticketed evening in a theater, but an affordable one for a program that has traveled a long way, in more senses than one, to get here.