Dancer Spotlight: Emily Reed
Hometown: Monee, Illinois
Company Member Since: 2018
Instagram: @e_reed11
What’s your “origin story”? How did you fall in love with ballet?
My parents said I was always dancing around everywhere we went from the beginning, my favorite being empty aisles in the grocery store. Then I saw the Nutcracker on PBS when I was three and grabbed my dad off the couch to dance with me during Grand Pas. After, I started asking for ballet classes, so my mom used this as an opportunity because I was still very attached to my pacifier. She said, only big kids do ballet so if I wanted to take classes I was going to have to give it up. On the first day she handed me ballet shoes and I handed her my pacifier. I never asked for it again and I’ve loved ballet ever since (and yes, I still dance in empty grocery store aisles)
Do you have any pre-show rituals or good-luck habits?
I typically like to eat the same thing every day during theater week before rehearsals and shows so I know how my body will feel. I like making sure it has enough of everything I need to fuel me properly. For our last shows of the season my go-to meal was baked sweet potatoes and tofu with quinoa, crispy chickpeas, spinach, avocados, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, hummus, cilantro and a lemon dressing. Miss Dawnell’s warm up class and a quick think/mark through of my dances, trying out some of the trickier parts full out, helps me feel prepared and gets my body ready for the show. Last, I like to take a moment alone to feel present, have gratitude and say a little prayer.
Ballet is so demanding — how do you take care of your body and recharge offstage?
At this point in my career, I do a lot to keep me going. Eating nutritious meals along with taking supplements like magnesium, calcium, glucosamine, MSM, burdock root to name a few. Icing, heat pad or Epsom salt baths depending on the need. Electrolytes and coconut water to rehydrate. I have many rollers, balls and gadgets to help roll out stiff, tight muscles that I’ll use along with arnica, CBD lotion or magnesium oil. When I’m dealing with an injury, I like doing red light and infrared sauna sessions as much as I can which helps stimulate cellular energy production, promotes healing, reduces inflammation, and boosts tissue repair. Oh, and one of my favorite things I started doing the last couple years is using castor oil on anything that’s bugging me at night while I sleep, which also helps with inflammation and pain. They make cotton castor oil packs for most body parts to help keep the oil in the targeted area and at this point I have a lot of them.
What’s your go-to comfort food after a long rehearsal day?
One of my favorites my husband and I make almost weekly is chickpea, veggie curry with gnocchi. We did it randomly one day instead of rice and now we’re obsessed. But usually right when I get home from rehearsal, I grab hummus and everything pretzel crisps to snack on before dinner.
Dancer memories are super-charged. How do you keep track of choreography?
My memory of a dance is generally really attached to the music. Sometimes a dance I haven’t thought of in years will be brought up and I’ll think I don’t remember the choreography, but then we’ll turn the song on and suddenly, my body will start going through the motions. Kind of like how you can remember the lyrics to songs you haven’t heard in forever. But that muscle memory comes from many hours of rehearsal to help program it. Along with the music, we often use counts to keep us together, but they also get attached to the choreography, so you’ll remember “pas de bourrée” on 5, “développé” on 6. Another tool choreographers use when teaching a dance, mostly with more contemporary movement that doesn’t necessarily have terminology, is their own vocabulary names or phrases for steps. So, they might go “close the book, push big button, melt then zap” and we’ll play that in our head as we dance to keep us on track.
Simply put, don’t be so hard on yourself, enjoy every moment you can and remember to breathe.
If you could dance any role, regardless of gender or repertoire, what would it be?
Coming to Grand Rapids Ballet I’m thankful to say I’ve got to dance a lot of my bucket list choreographer’s pieces and roles. A few of my favorites being Alejandro Cerrudo’s Extremely Close, Trey Mcintyre’s Wild Sweet Love and a stomper in Twyla Tharp’s In The Upper Room. One dance I would love to revisit is Lila York’s Celts. I performed it in the corps while in Milwaukee and I would love to dance it again as the Red Girl. Another I’d enjoy having another go at is The Old Child by Dani Rowe. I danced a section of it with Nathan Young a few years ago, but it was part of a longer work that I would love to see come back as a whole. Others I dream of dancing are Minus 16 by Ohad Naharin, The Seasons’ Canon by Crystal Pite and Shoot the Moon by Sol León & Paul Lightfoot – but honestly, I would love to dance anything from these 4 choreographic legends.
Aside from shoes and warmups, what is a staple in your dance bag?
I must have something to roll my feet and body out with. For my feet my fav is a spikey ball and for my body the 6” deep tissue Chirp wheel and recently MB5 Triggerpoint massage ball. I also need to have my VitaMedica Arnica Plus 15 gel handy for any lingering soreness.
Where do you see ballet heading in the next few years, and what excites you most about being part of that future?
While I do think there will always be a love for the classics we know, new productions of familiar stories will continue to draw in new audience members, such as Penny Saunder’s Sherlock that we premiered at the beginning of last season. New choreographers with fresh ideas are shifting the landscape, which I think keeps things interesting. Whether I’m dancing, watching or creating my own piece, ballet will forever be something that excites and inspires me.
