Reimagining 'Rite of Spring': Duke Alumna Reflects on Dance History Through KT Dance Collective Performance

As a student in Duke's Graduate Liberal Studies (GLS) program, Kalei Porter ('25) joined a unique multidisciplinary community with rich academic and artistic resources. Porter used the flexibility of her GLS degree to study History and the environment, while working as a dance teacher and performer. 

As the 2025 Season of the American Dance Festival came to a close, Porter reflected on a recent dance performance supported by ADF and NC Dance Project from Durham-based KT Collective Dance Company, founded and directed by Kristin Taylor Duncan, an instructor and choreographer in Duke’s Dance Program.

Ever since the relocation of the American Dance Festival (ADF) to Durham in 1977, the North Carolina dance community has played a significant role in the narrative of modern dance. 

An international leader in modern dance, ADF presents performances from dance companies around the world, and offers educational opportunities and local community programs. ADF began as the Bennington Dance School in 1934, founded by the accomplished leaders of the second generation of modern dance: Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman.  

As an ephemeral and embodied catalogue of American history, dance is an art form that could not be preserved in concrete ways until the invention of film. While other art forms could be archived and documented as visual masterpieces — drawings, paintings, musical notes or words on the page — dancers preserved their art by teaching the next generation.

Durham’s Kristin Taylor Duncan knows about preserving dance through teaching. As the founder and director of KT Dance Collective, Duncan teaches modern dance to students at Duke University and Riverside High School in Durham, NC. 

KT Collective creates live performances and original dance films, creating works that position themselves within dance history and American history with intentionality and grace.

On June 15, the KT Collective performed a live interpretation of Martha Graham’s performance of a sacrificial virgin from 1930’s “The Rite of Spring in America,” connecting to the history and lineage of Graham, a founding member of ADF and the first performer to embody the role.

"I believe this experience was a pivotal moment for company,” Taylor Duncan said. “We were creating this work that unexpectedly evoked a range of emotions. As I watched the dancers develop their roles and embody the music, there were moments in rehearsal that brought me to tears."

“The Rite of Spring” tells the story of a community that welcomes spring through a series of rituals that conclude in the death of a virgin. The piece is well-remembered within dance history, as during its 1913 debut the audience began to loudly, and at times violently, dispute the performance. This was because although the piece was originally performed by the Parisian Ballet Russes, the music was considered too amelodic and the movements and choreography strayed too far from traditional ballet. 

The performance by the KT Dance Collective featured original choreography set to Stravinski’s iconic score, but with a notable change. Instead of rioting, the audience was invited to contribute the hidden flowers amongst their chairs to the final resting place of the sacrificial virgin, emphasizing the increasing importance of community engagement within dance performance spaces. 

Unlike in 1913, the successful performance from KT Dance Collective was met with substantial applause, while the original “Rite of Spring” enjoyed only a brief initial run. The original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky was lost because it was not preserved on film — though it was later pieced together from notes by the Joffrey Ballet in 1987.

Though dance films were made as early as 1895 (“Annabelle Serpentine Dance”), the “Rite of Spring” was not well-enough regarded to be filmed. Today, dance films like “The Light Beyond the Forest” — a KT Dance Collective original set in the rich and diverse American landscape of the Mojave Desert — are able not only to preserve choreography, but to bring communities together for a new imagining of a piece that once caused so much disagreement.

Even as film offers a less ephemeral home for dance, fleeting in its own way, filmed pieces are still embodied and offer people a collective experience and method to convey messages and emotions that language cannot. It is in this way that the catalogue and legacy of modern dance continues.

In Fall 2025, Kalei Porter will continue her studies as a PhD candidate at UNC Chapel Hill, working on a degree in Environment, Ecology & Energy, and hopes to continue to grow her artistry within the local dance community.