Elisa Reed

Elisa Marie Reed of Phoenix graduated from Arizona State University with her MFA in Dance in May 2020 and holds a BFA in Dance from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA. She has worked as performer and teaching artist in Seattle, Chicago, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Phoenix and Flagstaff and as an Adjunct Professor at Scottsdale Community College and Graduate Teaching Assistant at Arizona State University. Over the past decade she has choreographed over 30 works produced around Phoenix. She has performed with Momentum Aerial, Scorpius Dance Theatre, Halo Movement Collective, Liliana Gomez, Mary Fitzgerald, Halley Willcox and Nicole Olson/Movement Chaos. She has had the privilege of performing numerous times in England and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In Flagstaff, she served as the Dance Department Chair at Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy from 2021-2025 teaching Tap, Hip-Hop, Ballet, Modern, Jazz and Aerial and has taught at Momentum Aerial, Lyra and Silks since 2022. Her work has been seen in Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy’s Department shows and at Momentum Aerial’s Hungry Hearts Cabaret and Frightful Fete.

Her training encompasses a wide range of forms. Her first experiences with dance were in a “non traditional” setting. In other words, she would go to raves and dance her heart out. The form that began her journey of dance was waving. Her training in a collegiate setting began with hip hop and breakdancing. This led her to modern dance as well as ballet and jazz. Over the years she has trained in several methods, forms and aesthetics. In the modern/contemporary realm she has studied Graham, Lewitzky, Cunningham, Taylor, Skinner Release Technique, Counter Technique and Limon. In African diasporic forms, she has studied Capoeira, Hip-hop, Jazz, Tap, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian. In ballet she has studied, Cecchetti and the School of American Ballet. In the realm of somatics, she has studied the Alexander Technique, BodyMind Centering, Ideokinesis, Laban Movement Analysis, Bartenieff Fundamentals and Yoga. In improvisational structures, she has studied from several teachers that include task based or image based improvisational structures, contact improvisation as well as Gaga movement language. She began studying aerial dance in 2010 and has since trained with Nicole Crist, Gavin Sisson, MoNika El, Joanie Garcia, Laurel Combs and Heather Elliott performing featured aerial roles in Scorpius Dance Theatre and her own work. She also serves as the Artistic Director for Hungry Heart’s Cabaret. The amalgamation of all of these influences can be found in her aesthetic. Her work is described as captivating, nuanced, dynamic and rigorous.