Emily Reed is from Monee, Illinois and began dancing when she was three. She studied at Faubourg School of Ballet followed by the Ruth Page Center of the Arts, where she trained under beloved ballet master Larry Long and Birute Barodicaite. Emily attended various summer intensives across the country on scholarship and was one of the first trainees for Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. Emily spent 2010–12 in the Milwaukee Ballet II program where she performed a wide range of repertoire with MBII and in the main company productions.

  
For six seasons Emily was with the Minnesota Ballet dancing such roles as Lucy in Dracula, Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, and George Balanchine’s Who Cares? and Tarantella before joining the Grand Rapids Ballet in 2018 where she is still a company member. Some of her favorite performances with GRB include Trey McIntyre's Wild Sweet Love, Clara in Val Caniparoli's The Nutcracker, Alejandro Cerrudo's Extremely Close, one of the leads in Adam Hougland's Cold Virtues and most recently- Hermia in Christopher Stowell’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a Little Russian Girl in George Balanchine’s Serenade. Original works Emily had the pleasure of being a part of are Darrell Grand Moultrie's Three Offerings, Danielle Rowe's November, and James Sofranko's Two Tangos.

 
Emily started teaching creative movement and ballet at the age of 15 for Ballet Boutique, a small studio in Frankfort, Illinois. She also was a sub for the Milwaukee Ballet School while she was in the MBII program and covered ballet classes for children to adults. Once moving to Grand Rapids, Emily taught at Dance Creations before joining the teaching staff at Academy of Dance Arts in Comstock Park.

Fun Fact: Emily was Clara in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes in Detroit, Michigan when she was 12.