Emily W. Reynolds graduated May 11, 2012 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance and choreography degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. She has been selected to participate in the American Dance Festival at Duke University this summer.

A 2008 graduate of Cleveland High School, Reynolds is the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. William G. Reynolds. She received the Bobby Chandler Merit Scholarship award and served on the promotional committee for the chairman of the Department of Dance at the university. Reynolds also received the Choreography Award for the senior class.

She performed in and choreographed numerous pieces during her tenure at VCU. Her senior choreography project was selected to represent VCU at the American College Dance Festival at James Madison University. It was adjudicated and chosen as the finale piece in the Mid-Atlantic Region Gala.

In 2011, she was selected to perform with six other dancers in “Restaging Shelter,” a seminal piece choreographed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the director of the New York company Urban Bush Women. The intense work which dramatizes the plight of the homeless in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina has been named an American Masterpiece by the National Endowment of the Arts. It was also featured in a documentary which debuted in January at The Lincoln Center in New York.

In 2010, Reynolds studied and performed in Greece and at the DAH Theatre in Belgrade, Serbia. The primary work featured in those performances was “Soldiers and Sacrifice.”