Christina Soriano is the director of the dance program and associate professor at Wake Forest University. She founded a program IMPROVment™ which is an integrative method that emphasizes physical and mental fitness by encouraging participants to create their own movement in response to auditory prompts. She also teaches a dance class in Winston-Salem, NC, to those living with Parkinson’s disease and has been involved in three scientific studies how improvisational dance can help the mobility and balance of people living with neurodegenerative disease. She collaborates with Christina Hugenschmidt, a Neuroscientist and Assistant Professor in Gerontology Geriatric Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Her research interests lie in the interplay between physical health and brain function. Together, they received funding from the National Parkinson Foundation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC, and most recently the NIH to conduct a randomized clinical trial, testing her improvisational dance method in a community of adults living with Mild Cognitive Impairment and their carepartners.