Intergenerational Dance Workshop

Christina Soriano is the Reynolds Professor of Dance at Wake Forest where she has been a faculty member since 2006. From 2017-2024, Christina served in the provost’s office, first as an administrative fellow, then an Associate and Vice Provost for the Arts and Interdisciplinary Initiatives. In addition to the new works she creates for the Wake Forest Dance Company, Christina’s choreography has been presented throughout New England, North Carolina, New York and in Vienna, Austria. Christina has premiered several new works for the Music Carolina Festival in Winston-Salem since 2013.  She often works with large, intergenerational casts of dancers and always with live musicians. Since 2012, Christina has regularly taught a community intergenerational dance class in Winston-Salem, NC, and has been involved in three scientific studies that look at the ways improvisational dance can help the mobility and balance of people living with neurodegenerative diseases.  She has received funding from the National Parkinson Foundation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC, and the National Institutes of Health to conduct randomized clinical trials, testing the efficacy of her improvisational dance method in older adult communities. She is grateful to collaborate on this work with Wake Forest School of Medicine neuroscientist Dr. Christina Hugenschmidt. This year, Christina received funding from the Arts Council of Winston-Salem to begin a pilot Arts on Prescription program to Forsyth County for older adults. 

Pianist Eric Schwartz has studied composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music, New York University, and both the Interlochen and Aspen Summer Music Festivals. Past teachers have included Margaret Brouwer, Donald Erb, George Tsontakis, and Randy Woolf. He earned his PhD, focusing on Contemporary Practices in Music Pedagogy for Pre-Professional Dancers, from UNCG. He has been a professional dance musician for nearly twenty-five years. Primarily interested in a synthesis of musical archetypes, Schwartz is always at work on a variety of genre bending projects. Formative influences include an amalgamation of heavy metal and the baroque intellectualism of Arnold Schoenberg. 

His music has been performed on five continents, at venues ranging from Merkin Concert Hall in NYC and the BMW Edge Theatre in Melbourne, Australia to universities, coffee shops, gas stations, and bars of all shapes and sizes. He has received awards and grants from Meet the Composer, ASCAP, The Society for New Music, The Puffin Foundation, The Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and The Ohio Federation of College Music Clubs.

Schwartz has served on the faculties of New York University, Hunter College, the Lucy Moses Music School, Wake Forest University, Davidson County Community College, and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he serves as Music Director for the School of Dance. He was the principal composer/curator for the Winston-Salem, NC based experimental music group Blue Mountain Forecast. He was formerly a Resident Composer for the Los Angeles based Tonoi contemporary music ensemble, the Minnesota based Renegade Ensemble, and NYC’s Vox Novus. His debut CD 24 Ways of Looking at a Piano, named one of the top classical CDs of 2005 by All Music Guide, is available from Centaur Records. His second solo album, OYOU is available from CD Baby. His music is also available on Signum Classics, Capstone Records, Trace Label, and a host of others, and is published by Murphy Music Press and Lovebird Music .

Schwartz, his wife, his two daughters, their three cats, and two dogs are all currently living in lovely Winston-Salem, NC.