‘We were busting at the seams in old space’

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

November 25, 2024

RICE LAKE – At 22 years young, Christine Fink – founder and owner of Christine’s Dance Company – signed the lease on her first studio space during her last semester at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

“I graduated in December 2008, (but) I signed the lease for my old (studio) in June 2008,” she said. “So there was a little bit of an overlap where I would drive up to Rice Lake, teach my classes, drive back to Eau Claire (and) go to school the next morning.”

It just so happened, Fink said, that her capstone to complete her business degree (with an emphasis in entrepreneurship) was “to write a business plan.”

“So I literally wrote the business plan for the business that I had opened,” she said. “I was so much younger than all the parents coming in there when I first started. Now I’m more the same age, if not older, than a lot of the parents coming in, and I’m starting to get past students, children.”

More than 15 years after opening her first studio, Fink said the dance company has grown to the point of requiring a larger, more substantial space.

“It just seemed like the build-up to the beginning of the season would become trickier and trickier to schedule the classes,” she said. “The demand was so great, and we didn’t have enough space to offer what the kids wanted and needed.”

The solution, Fink said, she found “literally right in the middle of our community” in a building on the recently redone Main Street (102 N. Main St.).

Something old, something new

Fink said before she bought the building, her dance company had explored the option of building a brand new facility – even purchasing a parcel of land – however, the project quickly went south after the cost of materials skyrocketed.

“I mean, we literally were a week away from breaking ground, and overnight, the (cost of the) entire project increased 52%,” she said.

After the cost of the project increased, Fink said she decided to sell the land back to its original owner.

“It was very heartbreaking,” she said, “but I didn’t do this for the last 15 years to just make a really bad decision right now and put ‘X’ amount of money into a building that was worth half that – it just wasn’t a good investment.”

After the land was sold, Fink said she didn’t know what the new plan for her company would be.

“I didn’t have the answer, but I knew it would come,” she said. “(That’s) probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned… is just to be patient, and when the right thing comes, it will come.”

A few years later, Fink purchased the building on Main Street – a decision she said she did not make lightly because it was an older structure.

“I (didn’t) want to get into something that was going to end up costing more money than a new building would have cost,” she said. “So we did a lot of research, a lot of due diligence on the building, on the renovation, and what we would need to make it what we want.”

With renovations on the new studio fully underway, Fink said her dance company is currently rehearsing in a temporary space in the local mall for the time being.

“It’s like 20,000 square feet,” she said. “It’s huge, but we put up some black partition walls – just like temporary walls. So we’re operating out of that right now.”

One major renovation cost, Fink said, comes from installing special spring floors in all five of her rehearsal spaces in the new studio.

“It’s basically a two-inch lift off the concrete,” she said, “It’s cushioned so you don’t really feel the spring underneath, but your joints do.”

Though a major project cost, Fink said those floors are “completely necessary” to protect the physical health of her dancers – some of which are as young as three years old.

Anticipated growth

Though running a dance studio is a dream job for her, Fink said it’s anything but a simple undertaking.

“I think on the outside looking in, (people are) like, ‘Oh, my gosh, wouldn’t that be so fun? Just teach dance classes and order pretty costumes,’” she said. “And yeah, it’s such a dream job, but it is a hard business.”

Like any small business owner, Fink said she has to wear many hats as there’s more than meets the eye to operating a dance studio – such as creative director, costume designer, choreographer, marketing specialist, customer service representative, program director and more.

“Thank God I have such a supportive family and husband who sees the vision, too, and supports me completely in it,” she said.

After “doing everything” for more than a decade, Fink said she began to learn the art of delegating.

“I was going to burn out,” she said. “I knew something had to give, and I knew I could teach people some of the things that I was doing.”

Now with a staff of 17 people, Fink said she’s been able to teach some of the things she was previously doing herself to her employees.

“There’s such beauty in learning that skill of delegating and learning the skill of letting go,” she said. “It gives you so much more freedom, and I think that is truly the reason why we are able to expand at a larger scale into this new building.”

Once renovations are done on her company’s new studio – which is scheduled to be complete in February 2025 – Fink said she anticipates taking on additional students and staff.

“We did add seven more classes once we figured out that we were moving to the mall (temporarily) and we were going to have more space,” she said. “So it’ll be interesting to see what the schedule will (look like) once I can schedule out five rooms – I’m anticipating quite a bit of growth there.”

With Christine’s drawing students from the smaller communities surrounding Rice Lake combined with its bigger city amenities – like a Walmart, a large grocery store and the mall – Fink said, “people drive here for other reasons… so for them to also drive to dance class isn’t a big deal.”

“I did run the numbers recently, a couple years ago,” she said. “Forty percent of our student body were from Rice Lake addresses, so that means 60% – more than half – are from surrounding communities.”

Building community

When deciding what to do with her degree before graduation, Fink said starting a dance studio in Rice Lake seemed obvious because of the impact dance studios had on her life.

Fink said though both of her parents were born and raised in Rice Lake, her family frequently moved for her father’s work.

“Whenever we moved… the first thing we would do is find the dance studio,” she said. “The dance studio was (my) community – you want to surround yourself with like-minded people, and that’s where I found my friends anytime we’d move.”

That sense of community and friendship is what Fink said she was missing in Rice Lake after her family moved back her sophomore year of high school and found there was no established studio in the area.

“(After I) completed my business degree… I was like, ‘This is what I really want to do, and the community needs it,’” she said. “I knew what a dance studio could offer a community.”

Starting with two rehearsal spaces, Fink said she began growing her business and building a reputation for herself and her company.

“I felt like I had to really prove myself, which is good,” she said. “I should have to (at) 22 years old, (since parents are) coming in and they’re going to pay me money to teach their daughter dance – I better know what I’m doing.”

Though at the time there were people doubting her and the idea of starting the dance company because of her age, Fink said she’s happy she took the leap when she did.

“If I would have tried (to start the business) at 30, I think I would have talked myself right out of it, but being 22, I didn’t have a family, I didn’t have a husband (so it was the right time to take on the challenge),” she said.

More than ‘just walls, floors’

In a city of roughly 9,000 people, with no other established, long-standing dance companies in the area, Fink said her biggest “competitor” is school sports.

“I say that with a little bit of an asterisk, because I encourage kids to do other things, too,” she said. “I think as an extracurricular activity in a small community…  a core belief of mine is that kids should do a lot of things. I think that overall makes them better individuals.”

Fink said she believes Christine’s has been the only studio to survive the past couple of years because of the quality of the dance education she offers.

“We have such good systems, we have such good policies in place, we have curriculum set, we have really good staff (and) really low turnover of staff,” she said. “I feel like (we’ve) really solidified the market (in Rice Lake).”

Fink said her dance studio isn’t solely focused on winning competitions and receiving the highest accolades – instead putting an emphasis on having fun, building community and providing structure to her students as well.

Though Christine’s offers a high-quality dance education, Fink said she understands most of her students won’t be moving on professionally and ensures the curriculum does more than just teach them how to be a good dancer.

“Our job as dance educators is to instill really good life skills in these kids,” she said. “It doesn’t need to become a job.”

As she, her students and her staff await the grand opening of the company’s new studio, Fink said she’s just happy to have brought the same happiness, structure and community to children in Rice Lake as she felt in dance studios growing up.

“Every time I would leave (a) dance studio, no matter how I walked in, I felt happy,” she said. “To be able to share that with kids – I feel like that’s why we are successful. I feel like that is happening, and kids do love it, and they come back year after year for it.”

Visit christinesdancecompany.com, or Christine’s Dance Company’s Facebook page, to learn more.