Within the grim history of the Holocaust, the story of the artists in the Terezin concentration camp still has the power to make us cringe. Used by the Nazis to deflect world attention from their death factories, Terezin was presented as a model artists colony, a false front for their miserable business. Choreographer Donald Byrd created The Theater of Needless Talents for Spectrum Dance Theater in 2008, in his signature high-tension style, to honor those Jewish artists, but also to connect their fate to contemporary human-rights abuses. This restaging reminds us that though the inmates of Terezin are long dead, the authoritarian impulses that created their prison still exist. SANDRA KURTZ

Oct. 25-28, 8 p.m., 2012