ABOUT

Spectrum Dance Theater's The Theater of Needless Talents is dance, theatrical vignettes, and cabaret created to the music of Erwin Schulhoff, a brilliant Czech Jewish composer and performer who died during the Holocaust.

The Czech Jewish comic and cabaret artist, Karel Svenk, who died in transit from Auschwitz to Mauthausen in 1945, called the performance group he created in 1930's Prague The Theater of Needless Talents.

Spectrum Dance Theater's The Theater of Needless Talents strives for the audience to make connections between the Holocaust and the present day sufferings of the world that result from prejudice, oppression and persecution.

Spectrum Dance Theater's The Theater of Needless Talents endeavors to have audiences consider that if we do not learn from the horrors of the Holocaust, the atrocities will be repeated, as evidenced by the recent human rights violations in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and the current injustices in Darfur.

Spectrum Dance Theater's The Theater of Needless Talents is inspired by those Jewish artists who even while imprisoned in Nazi death camps and with uncertain futures, through the creation, presentation, and performance of artistic activities sought to generate optimism and affirm life.

Spectrum Dance Theater's The Theater of Needless Talents asserts, "The artistic impulse is a human birthright, a trait so ancient, universal and persistent that it is almost surely innate."