KT COLLECTIVE is a project based dance company in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Kristin Taylor Duncan in 2012, the company produces works that stem from modern, contemporary and jazz techniques. Works are often inspired my sculptures, paintings, and life experiences. The company had its first performance at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC. The work ” Not Myself” was commissioned by the museum in response to two artists from the 30 Americans Exhibit, (Xaviera Simmons and Purvis Young).
Mrs. Taylor Duncan was soon granted the Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Grant in the fall of 2012 to production her first show. KTC has performed in the first annual Triangle Dance Project Showcase, Durham and Raleigh Artwalks, NC Dance Festival, Durham’s Kwanzaa Celebration and with the Nasher Musuem at Duke University. In 2019 KT COLLECTIVE performed in the Ernie Barnes Tribute hosted by the NC Museum of History which was then followed by a commissioned worked by Proxemic Media to create a piece for the civil rights mural, “Continuing to Tell”, located in downtown Durham.
Collaborators and company members of KT COLLECTIVE include Jackie Bennett, Alexandra Burchette, Kim Hall, Darian Moore, Jasmine Powell and Megan Ross.
The Artistic Director
Kristin Taylor Duncan is a native of Durham, NC. She is a BFA graduate of the UNC School of the Arts. Mrs. Duncan has trained at Jacobs Pillow, and on scholarship at the Lou Conte Dance Studios in Chicago. In New York, she apprenticed with Urban Bush Women, and worked with choreographers Nathan Trice, Bridget Moore, Christal Brown and Sidra Bell. Kristin has performed with Kariamu Welsh and Nnenna Freelon in the Clotheline Muse, cellist and vocalist Shana Tucker, Andrea Woods Valdez, Helen Simoneau, Mexico City-based Tania Perez-Salas Compania de Danza, Juel Lane, Gaspard Louis, nosi DANCE theatre, as well as created and performed works with Yuxtadanza Compania de Danza of Venezuela.
In 2013 Kristin performed with Helen Simoneau for the DANCE X Tour traveling to Montreal, Tokyo and Busan, South Korea. She has taught in UNCSA’s preparatory program, for the Festival of North Carolina Dance, Slippery Rock and also as a guest teacher at Enloe High School (Raleigh, NC), Durham School of the Arts and Tri-Cities Performing Arts School in Atlanta, GA.
For two seasons Kristin joined the Community Choral Project at UNC Chapel Hill as the High School choreographer. She as also worked with the Glenwood Elementary award winning 5TH grade Show Choir. Kristin has choreographed works for the elementary students participating in Evening of Entertainment presented by Durham Public Schools performed at the Durham Performing Arts Center.
Mrs. Duncan is a proud recipient of the Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grant producing her first concert for KT COLLECTIVE. Since the founding days of KT COLLECTIVE, she has been commissioned to create works by Helen Simoneau, NC Museum of Art, the Nasher Museum, NC Museum of History and Myra Weiss of Proxemic Media. Most recently Kristin has performed a solo work choreographed by Jasmine Powell. Ms. Powell also invited Kristin to perform in the “Problem PSA” by music vocalist Kwanza Jones.
Currently, she is the Dance Educator at Riverside High School, Duke University and the Ballet School of Chapel Hill and Kristin is excited to begin the planning for KT COLLECTIVE’s 10th Anniversary season.
THE COMPANY
Jasmine Powell is a dance artist of the community from Hillsborough, NC. Locally trained, her performance career began with Durham’s Collage Dance Company, then moved to join Dance Diaspora, and Philadanco where she studied, performed and choreographed original work. She continued exploring art and its meaning with a B.A. from Oberlin College, and M.F.A. from Hollins University in collaboration with the American Dance Festival, and Frankfurt University for Music and Performing Arts. Jasmine enjoys the pleasure of having performed original work by Dianne McIntyre, Milton Myers, Ronald K. Brown, KT Niehoff, and more. As an artist surrounding herself with the creation of visual, and choreographic art, Jasmine does not exclude the art of nature, culture, teaching, learning, and listening.Currently, she is on Faculty at Elon University where she brings cultural history into the dance curriculum with multiple forms. She is currently a dancer with KT COLLECTIVE, as well as COMPANY, and creates her own aesthetic choreography locally and regionally with performances and workshops. As research inquiries fuel her passions, Jasmine is thankful to have learned the value in exploring the organic movement of the body’s personal story and is investigating genre-crossing dance as the inquiry to how opposite embodied features reside in each other.
Alexandra Burchette is a dancer, maker, and arts administrator living in Durham, North Carolina. Raised in Concord, NC she studied ballet, tap, jazz, and Irish dance as a child, finding joy and community through movement at a young age. A pivotal summer at North Carolina Governor’s School introduced her to the practice of modern dance and somatics and marked the first of many sojourns to watch performances at the American Dance Festival.
Alexandra’s collegiate years were spent at NC State University dividing her time between the study of textile design and as a company member of Panoramic Dance Project. Under the direction of Tara Mullins and Autumn Mist Belk she had the privilege of dancing for many incredible choreographers, most significantly Baba Chuck Davis. Alexandra spent the summer of 2019 at the American Dance Festival studying dance and somatics with Paul Matteson. In 2020 Alexandra was cast in an experimental dance theatre production under the direction of Craig Quintero and Torry Bend to be performed at Duke University.
Alexandra is currently the Program Assistant to North Carolina State University’s Dance Program and an artist liaison for the Brehm Residency through Fuller Seminary, exploring the integration of art and theology. She continues the study and practice of modern dance and, in recent years, has been greatly impacted by the teachings of Tracey Durbin and Andrea Woods Valdés.
Megan Ross is a dance artist and educator based in Durham. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama she graduated from Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) with the Dance Achievement Award. Megan continued her education at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA where she earned a B.A. in Dance Performance and French & Francophone Studies Magna Cum Laude. She has had the honor to perform works by Mark Morris Dance Group founding member, Teri Weksler; répétiteur for Donald McKayle, Randall Anthony Smith; and répétiteur for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Germaul Barnes.
Megan has presented her own choreography throughout the northeast including the Richmond Dance Festival, North Carolina Dance Festival, Loose Leaves Dance Showcase, and American College Dance Association. In addition to dance, she has been a longtime pilates practitioner and completed The Pilates Center’s 950 hour Advanced Teacher Training Program. Currently Megan is the school director at Barriskill Dance Theatre School, teaches pilates at InsideOut Body Therapies, performs with the KT Collective, and creates her own work.
Tristen Matthews is originally from Washington DC and currently resides in Leesburg, Virginia. She discovered dance at a very early age and by the age of 4 she was dancing at the Dance Institute of Washington. At the age of 8, she she began training at the Washington School of Ballet, and at the Kennedy Center in the Dance Theater of Harlem youth program. She attended the Metropolitan School of the Arts (MSA), in Fairfax Virginia where she trained in ballet, modern, jazz, and contemporary. Tristen’s performance experience includes The Nutcracker with the Joffrey Ballet, works by Merce Cunningham and Jose Limon, and in Florence, Italy with Roy Assf and Alleyne Dance where she also performed her own choreography. Tristen received a BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she majored in contemporary/ modern dance and studied a variety of techniques including Cunningham, Graham, Limon, and Ballet. In her senior year, she attended The Ailey School Independent Study Program where trained intensively in Horton, Ballet, Graham, Dunham, Contemporary, and West African and was mentored by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater member Patrick Coker. Tristen is currently a member of the contemporary ballet company, Gin Dance Company.
Lauren McBarron is a performer, dance educator, and choreographer from Harrison City, a small town just outside of Pittsburgh. She received her BFA in dance from Slippery Rock University in 2021 with concentrations in performance, choreography, and business administration. At SRU, she worked with choreographers such as Bill Evans, Jesse Factor, Lindsay Fisher Viatori, Jennifer Keller, and Grady Bowman, and had the opportunity to perform Martha Graham’s Celebration at the Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out series in 2019. Lauren danced professionally with the West Virginia Dance Company from 2021 to 2023, where she performed works by Gerri Houlihan, Toneta Akers-Toler, Donald Laney, Maureen Kaddar, Dane Toney, and Heather Taylor-Martin for K-12 schools in West Virginia and the public.
GUEST ARTIST
Jackie Bennett is an independent dance artist and clinical social worker currently residing in Durham, NC. She holds a master’s in social work and a master’s of fine arts in dance. She has had the joy of performing the choreographic work of various North Carolina-based choreographers such as Kristin Taylor Duncan, Raina Lucas, Jasmine Powell, and Toya Chinfloo. Her choreographic work has been presented at festivals such as Greensboro Fringe Festival (NC), Move to Change (NY), and Wimmin at Work (NC). In 2022 her poetry work “A Dance with Grief” was published in DanceGeist Magazine and she was recently a presenter at the Colorado Dance Education Organization Conference in 2024. Jackie plans to continue to research, create, perform, and engage in both dance and community work that highlights, encourages, and inspires the voices and lives of marginalized individuals.
