In The Theater of Needless Talents, renowned modern dance choreographer Donald Byrd strives to provoke audiences once more.
Byrd, artistic director of Seattle's Spectrum Dance Theater and a Tony Award-winner, often addresses difficult, sensitive topics in his pieces, including domestic violence, September 11, war stories and political revolutions. Co-commissioned by Duke Performances, Needless Talents deals with one of the most controversial topics yet: the Holocaust.
While deciding on this subject, Byrd drew inspiration from the world's recent genocides.
"After the Holocaust, people promised 'never again,'" he said. "But now, after all that time, we are still dealing with the same conflict. We can't just give lip service to 'never again.' I wanted to make a purposeful work that would increase people's awareness."
The performance is a collaboration of dance, cabaret and theatrical vignettes. Three musicians from Durham's Mallarmé Chamber Players and 12 dancers depict the stories of talented Jewish artists detained in Nazi prison camps. Following a silent extended prologue, there is a series of dance episodes illustrating their stories, separated by speech taken from the detainees themselves.
The musical score is written by Erwin Schulhoff, a composer who died in one of the camps. Instead of simply reenacting the stories, the dances are a response to Schulhoff's music and absence, Byrd explained.
"For something as profound as the Holocaust, re-enactments tend to diminish the stories and people," he said. "The way to avoid that is by abstraction through dance."
In this way, the work gains an integrity that cannot be achieved through mere storytelling, Duke Performances Director Aaron Greenwald said. The dances are instead open to interpretation. Freshman Amanda DeQuattro, who is working towards a dance minor, said she is excited to see how the dancers will interact and bring these issues to life.
"It's really important to relate different movements to controversial issues, especially in modern dance," she said.
Along with Byrd's ability to turn provocative questions into a fluid art form, Greenwald said the beauty of Byrd's work lies in his capability to command multiple dancers in unison.
"A lot of people can control single dancers, but the intimacy and violence and sexuality that moves two people at once is something entirely different," Greenwald said. "[Byrd] understands the physics and emotional resonance of that in a way I haven't seen before."
Byrd's rigorous approach convinced Greenwald and Duke Performances to help commission the work. Along with two showings of Needless Talents, Byrd will also complete a one-week residency on campus.
The work is not for the optimist, but it is a realistic showcase that is often not pretty but always beautiful, Greenwald said.
"This piece operates in idealism," Byrd said. "Idealism moves people to act-it proves to people that they have a capacity to actually go out and do something."
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