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Chrissy Kerkvliet started dancing with Miller Marley at age five. By eight years old she was performing with the elite in the Miller-Marley's Entertainers. She began voice lessons at Miller-Marley at age eight, and that's when her performing career really took flight. Singing the Patsy Cline Medley and The Phantom of the Opera, Chrissy began to receive many offers to perform around the area. She was chosen to head a performance for the Prairie Village Variety Show, hand-picked to sing for the President of the United States at the Agricultural Hall of Fame Memorial with other singers such as Patty Loveless and the Bellamy Brothers. She performed at Starlight Theater in “Annie” and “The King and I”, and at Theatre in the Park in “Fiddler on the Roof”. She also joined a traveling acting group who performed a play called “I'm Only Seventeen” about drinking and driving. They took this play to many local high schools and to AA groups. While performing at numerous shows around the Kansas City area with Miller-Marley she received the opportunity to perform with the Entertainers abroad at the World's Fair in Seville, Spain in 1992. She notes this as one of the highlights of her career. Chrissy joined the lead choir and drill team at Frontier Trail Junior High in eighth grade. By the time she was a freshman, she was being groomed by local high schools to be captain of their drill teams. She chose to take her skills to Olathe East High School. There she joined the drill team and the lead choir. In her junior year, she was given two #1 ratings at the state vocal competition and named lieutenant of the drill team. Her vocal talents reserved her another chance to take her skills abroad. In 2006, her choir was asked to go to Germany to perform with their top choir. They made many stops along the way including: The Czech Republic, Austria , and Switzerland. With a grade point average of nearly 4.0 she decided to take academics more seriously. She gave up her senior year of drill team to attend the college jump start program. While in the program she took classes from Johnson County Community College. She still continues her education believing that “you can't learn enough. There is so much out there to know and to grasp.” Chrissy never gave up her love for dance and song. She occasionally taught and choreographed for other studio's, and continued to take dancing and singing lessons. It was when she brought her own four-year-old daughter into Miller-Marley that the fever hit her to dance again. She asked if she could teach at Miller Marley, and began substituting classes. She got the chance she'd been hoping for. She is back at Miller-Marley, where she considers home. Chrissy would like to thank Shirley, Brian, Joan, Ann, and all the amazing teachers she has had the honor to learn from, and now gets to teach with. One special thank you goes out to the woman whom she says “believed in her” and gave her the “second chance of a lifetime”, Mrs. Sharon Ingebritson. |
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