Dance With Me opens in a bombed-out home in Ukraine, where a young boy, Sasha (Logan Hannigan), sits alone eating the last can of food in the cupboard. He hears voices outside — German soldiers talking just beyond the gate. Before long, they spot him and try to force their way in. Sasha finds a gun.
We then jump forward decades to an elderly Sasha (Elya Baskin) waking up beside his wife, Anya (Laraine Newman). He’s affectionate with her as they get ready for the day, still clearly in love after all these years. That tenderness is tested at the doctor’s office, where Sasha is diagnosed with dementia. Though the doctor encourages Anya to consider a nursing home, she just doesn’t have the heart to do it.
Back at home, Sasha grows more inattentive, his memory slipping further by the day. Anya responds the only way she knows how — she puts on music and asks him to dance with her like they did when they first met. Soon, beautiful memories of that moment wash over him, transporting him to the past, where he doesn’t recognize Anya.
Sasha (Elya Baskin) wakes at the edge of his bed in a tender morning moment from Dance With Me.
“Anya responds the only way she knows how — she puts on music and asks him to dance with her like they did when they first met.”
Nicholas Paskhover based Dance With Me on his own family. His grandfather Boris was sent to a concentration camp in Romanian-occupied Ukraine at nine years old. He escaped with his father and brother, but he never spoke much about losing his mother and sisters there. Decades later, dementia dragged those buried memories to the surface. As a result, Paskhover’s grandmother Maya spent the last years of their fifty-plus-year marriage watching the man she loved slip between the present and his trauma, sometimes even forgetting who she was. No matter how deeply you love someone, you can still lose them while they’re alive.
First, I love seeing Laraine Newman in anything, and she makes a strong impact as Elya Baskin in this sentimental tale. Paskhover shows great command in storytelling, bringing out the traumatic memories of the Holocaust without bringing up the Holocaust. As deep as the storytelling elements are, Dance With Me ultimately remains a love story.
Dance With Me screened at the 2026 LA Shorts International Film Festival.
"…you can still lose them while they're still alive."
