Cast of Shift

CAST.      
Becky Hill: Director & Dancer
Brock Rovenstine: Musician
Chloe Edmonstone: Musician & Dancer
Kristin Andreassen: Musician & Dancer
Meredith Krygowski: Musician & Dancer
Sarah Morgan: Dancer

GUEST ARTISTS.
Eric Frey: Musician 
Hasee Ciaccio: Musician 
Jesse Milnes: Musician 
Emily Doebler: Dancer 
Micah Ling: Musician
Jeremy Darrow: Musician 

Becky Hill grew up in Michigan, spent extensive time in West Virginia and now calls Nashville, Tennessee home. She started dancing at age three and has worked with Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, Rhythm in Shoes and Good Foot Dance Company and has studied with an array of percussive dance luminaries; Eileen Carson, Sharon Leahy, Sandy Silva,  Ira Bernstein and many more. She has been awarded two West Virginia Division of Culture & History Professional Development Grants, choreographed two pieces in celebration of Wheatland Music Festival’s 40th Anniversary for the Carry it On Project, has organized Dare to be Square Helvetia, West Virginia for the past five years, serves part-time as the Events Coordinator for Augusta Heritage Center, coordinates the Mountain Dance Trail Project through Augusta and now teaches movement at the Linden Waldorf School in Nashville, TN. You can find her calling square dances, performing with the T-Mart Rounders and two-stepping the nights away. She directed her first evening-length music and dance show, Shift, inspired by Appalachia, in November 2017 and is excited to continue to work on it.

Brock Rovenstine grew up in the midwest, and moved to Nashville in 2011. Shortly thereafter, he received an internship at Bells Bend Farms. The farm manager, Eric, played the fiddle, and would ask Brock to play rhythm guitar whenever they felt like taking a break in the shade. A few months later he borrowed a banjo from a buddy and started teaching himself the clawhammer technique. Several years later Brock still can rarely be found playing tunes outside of Bells Bend, but enjoys holding down the guitar with the Bells Bend String Band at square dances and other social gatherings throughout the region. He is currently training to be an arborist, and is thrilled to be among the talented cast for this show. He went to Holiday Nashville and had Mic give him a slick haircut just for this show.

Chloe Edmonstone is a second generation fiddle player and dancer. Beginning at age 8, she was heavily immersed in a rigorous study of ballet and modern dance, and continued her dance training at North Springs Performing Arts High School.  She spent her summers attending southeastern Fiddler's Conventions with her mother, and  invested her teenage years in being mentored by renowned fiddle maker and tune collector Joe Thrift. She moved to Asheville in 2010 where she worked with the Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre. During this time, Chloe also formed Locust Honey and has spent the seven years since touring extensively in the US and in Ireland and the UK.  She had her original song as well as her rendition of a Clyde Davenport fiddle tune in two different feature films in 2016. Chloe hangs her hat in Tennessee, where she continues to tour, teach, dance, and work. www.locusthoney.com

Kristin Andreassen, is a native of Portland, Oregon, wound her way through the dance halls of Montreal, Cape Breton Island, Maryland, New York City and the Canadian arctic before landing in Nashville in 2015. As a principal dancer with the Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, she performed Appalachian clogging alongside stepdance, tap and other vernacular dance of America and its immigrant communities. In '04, Kristin hung up her dance shoes to play guitar and sing with the old time stringband Uncle Earl and later the "folk noir" harmony trio, Sometymes Why. Kristin pulls her dance background into original songs like the pattycake-based "Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes" and "How the Water Walks". Her music has appeared on Showtime’s The Affair and ABC’s Nashville, with the sound of her dancing feet in the Ed Helms film Cedar Rapids. Kristin is co-founder and Artistic Director of the all-ages Miles of Music Camp. She knows a lot more about chainsaws and ventilation baffles than she did before she started renovating a house on the Cumberland River last year. www.kristinandreassen.com

Meredith Krygowski continues to be active in arts management as well as performing throughout the country as a fiddle player and percussive dancer. Originally from Michigan, Meredith cut her teeth in the old-time music scene, where she played traditional fiddle and clogged. As an apprentice to Sheila Graziano, Meredith was asked to perform as a part of the 2013 Wheatland Music Festival’s Carry It On Project under the artistic direction of Sharon Leahy. Now residing in Nashville, Meredith tours alongside her husband, Adrian Krygowski.  The pair come together as Adrian + Meredith, a gypsy-punk-folk band that honors the traditions of Folk and Americana music while pushing beyond those genres' boundaries and performs nationwide. Fulfilling her passion for people, relationships, and creativity, Meredith continues to be an advocate for the arts and works to build collaborative communities through inspiring the connection of people. www.adriankrygowski.com

Sarah Morgan, a native of West Virginia, moved to Nashville, TN in 2009. Before that, she spent the previous 5 years working and touring throughout the state of WV with the West Virginia Dance Company under the direction of Toneta Akers-Toler and Donald Laney. After settling in Nashville, she worked briefly with StillPoint Dance Theatre under the direction of Sharon Perry. It was during this time that she met Banning Bouldin, Founder and Artistic Director of New Dialect. Although her time in studio along side Bouldin and other movers was short, it was an influential time. In 2011, Sarah took a break from the dance scene to get married and to start a family.