For the dancer and instructor, putting her hands in the soil helps her de-stress. She’s also an avid canner, which happened to be what she was doing with her mother when the Tribune spoke with her.
“We’re making peach chutney … It needs a bit of cayenne pepper, though, but not everyone likes a little bit of spice in their chutney.”
Corrine Stromsten has been teaching dance for over 20 years, almost 10 of which have been at her studio, Dance in Common, on the corner of Oliver Street and First Avenue South.
In the summers, she’s in her garden or out foraging.
“My motto is always whatever comes to me, whatever I can find, is what we can and what we eat,” she said while explaining that she always has berry buckets with her.
“You keep a journal and you write where you’ve been and what you’ve found.”
But gardening isn’t the main thing that keeps her busy. Even her summers are filled with dance classes.
Stromsten grew up in Vancouver and began dancing at the age of seven. After her family moved to Richmond when she was in middle school, Stromsten recalled making the hour or so bus ride (including a bus transfer) back to the Vancouver Academy of Music so she could continue her classes.
In Grade 11, her family moved to Langley, and she decided to take a break from dance, although creativity was never far from her heart. She joined theatre classes and performed West Side Story. The following year, the theatre students were each asked to write a play and propose it to their teacher. Her teacher selected Stromsten’s play as the one they would perform.
Her play, Through a Child’s Eye, was about how dance helped someone going through a divorce, a personal one for Stromsten, who used to dance to help her cope with her parents’ divorce. That year, Stromsten was busy writing the script, casting students, making costumes and finally, putting on the production for the school.
After high school, she pivoted from English to early childhood education, eventually teaching preschool and daycare and returning to the dance world. A husband (whom she met while performing the West Side Story in high school — he played Diesel, she played Anybodys) and two kids later, the family moved to Horsefly in 2000.
“We wanted to have our kids to be able to, you know, grow up like kids should grow up, climbing trees and making forts in the winter,” said Stromsten.
It’s here where Stromsten began teaching ballet and jazz at the Horsefly Community Hall, putting on productions for the local school. After reading a newspaper article about a Williams Lake ballet teacher, Maureen Saunders, she decided to give her a call. Before she knew it, she found herself commuting between Horsefly and Williams Lake to attend ballet classes.
This led Stromsten to a difficult decision.
Saunders asked Stromsten to teach contemporary dance in her studio, which had not been offered there before. Stromsten also challenged and passed her Intermediate ballet exam. She knew she wanted to continue teaching dance and, therefore, needed to focus her training in one place.
“I had to close my [Horsefly] studio, and it was really, really hard … A lot of parents didn’t understand. But I wanted to make a go of it.”
She later passed her Advanced I ballet exam, which was the introduction to the teacher training program. In 2014, Maureen Saunders retired, and Stromsten took over the studio, creating Dance in Common.
Almost 10 years later, part of what makes Stromsten’s studio so successful is her ability to push the boundaries, combining ballet with contemporary, including theatrics, a bit of a “no-no” in the ballet world, loyal to its traditions.
For Stromsten, though, who was one of the founding members of Arts on the Fly, she loves mixing styles and, next year, wants her dance recital to be more of a theatre production, similar to what she was doing in Horsefly, with acting, song and dance.
Her studio is also warm and inviting, open to all. Before COVID, Stromsten had 16 boys in her ballet studio, more than any studio in the Lower Mainland. The story was picked up by CBC Radio.
“It was very mixed because [the boys] were dirt biking dancers. They loved it so much.”
While some people felt ballet was too feminine for boys, Stromsten thought, “Why can’t they just dance and enjoy dance for dance?”
When asked how she got so many boys to join her classes, she said she didn’t know. She made the classes available, and people showed up.
While COVID shut down classes for a while, the studio is back running strong. A few of her students have gone on to intensive programs in Vancouver and Victoria, even returning to Williams Lake to teach in the summers.
That’s what she’s doing now, teaching dance in the evenings and in the mornings, she’s in her garden or canning.
“My grandma was a canner. My mom was a canner. We’ve always canned since we were kids.”
Stromsten tried her chutney while explaining her love for food. A family full of allergies, she’s spent the last 25 years finding ways to cook healthy meals. Not only is her family’s health important to her, but so is the health of her dancers. She encourages them to understand how food works, the importance of eating healthy food and how it can repair the body.
When she has the extra time, she also assists at the Horsefly Nursery, owned by her husband Wade’s parents, Rose and Eric. The entire family helps out, from grandparents to grandkids.
But when she can be in her garden, she is. It’s therapeutic.
“It helps me think, and then I can problem solve or, you know, just relax or not worry about stuff.”
She encourages people to embrace life, whatever may come.