On Monday, Feb 23, 2026, Community School of Davidson’s (CSD) middle school dancers opened their dance performance of “Sunrise on the Reaping” for dress rehearsals. They continued dress rehearsals for audiences of elementary-school-age kids until Wednesday, three in total. When Thursday hit, they started their official six show run with tickets available for parents, teachers and other viewers to buy.
“Sunrise on the Reaping,” a “Hunger Games” prequel set in between “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and “The Hunger Games” was released on March 18, 2025. Middle schoolers at CSD were full of excitement for this addition to the series, even more so when they learned that the 2026 spring dance performance would be inspired by “Sunrise on the Reaping.”
But that announcement was far from the beginning.
“Mockingjay,” the third book in the “Hunger Games” series, was published in 2010. The filming of the movie adaptation of “The Hunger Games” started soon after, and many scenes were filmed in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina.
At the time, everyone was talking about it, and Sara Laffoon, CSD’s middle school dance teacher, noticed.
“I took a chance… on a performance that changed the way we ran our dance program moving forward.” Sara Laffoon said. “That year for the first time I introduced the idea of adding character roles into our shows.”
CSD’s first “Hunger Games” dance show in December 2011 featured 25 students in character roles–well over 200 performed in this year’s “Sunrise on the Reaping” show.
While the first three shows (inspired by “The Hunger Games,” “Catching Fire,” and “Mockingjay”) were performed at Lake Norman High School, which makes it even more special that students performed this year’s “Sunrise on the Reaping” in the Black Box Theatre at CSD’s Upper School.
This year’s cast and crew faced new challenges, as well, including a shocker to many North Carolinians: two weeks of snow days in January.
“[The snow days] put us two weeks behind schedule right before the show. We went into tech rehearsals without a set or a dance floor, and some of our students had not finished their choreography. We caught up and it all ended up fine,” Laffoon said.
But even though much has changed since the start of the “Hunger Games” dance tradition, the heart of CSD, and even some of the people, have stayed the same.
“Our very own Ms. Rylee played the lead role of Katniss in our performance of ‘Catching Fire’ when she was in my classes in 8th grade,” Laffoon said of Rylee Rosenthal, now a CSD middle school dance teacher who worked tirelessly on this production.
Rosenthal remembers her experience fondly in a Director’s note at the beginning of the show’s program, and students had similar experiences with this year’s show.
“I had a ton of fun and it was a great experience. I also made lots of new friends,” Wyatt Cunningham (‘31) said.
The only book in the “Hunger Games” franchise that CSD hasn’t adapted into a dance show (so far) is “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” a prequel published in 2020.
The legacy of this series leaves many in the community wondering and waiting to see if the story will continue on CSD’s stage.
Please enjoy this gallery of shots from the shows, courtesy of CSD Journalism photographers.
