San Francisco Ballet has announced its 2026-27 season, anchored by a new William Forsythe commission set to premiere at the company's 2027 Opening Night Gala on January 14 — details of the piece itself are still to be announced. The season's contemporary centerpiece is "Divine Creatures," a mixed bill running April 8–14, 2027 built around the influence of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes on present-day choreography.
That program brings Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Faun — described by the company as refracting the myth "through a modern lens, echoing Nijinsky's revolutionary sensuality" — into SF Ballet's repertory for the first time, alongside a world premiere from Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber set to a new score by Pulitzer Prize finalist and seven-time Grammy nominee Andy Akiho, and Yuri Possokhov's Violin Concerto, danced to Stravinsky.
Why It's Worth Watching
Pairing a first Forsythe commission for the company with a Ballets-Russes-themed program is a deliberate bit of framing: it puts new choreography from Forsythe, Cherkaoui, and Smith & Schraiber in direct conversation with the same early-20th-century moment that first pushed ballet toward the kind of boundary-pushing work this site covers. Confirm exact programming and casting on San Francisco Ballet's official site as the season approaches.