Barre South Expands — Carolina Park Gets the Next Studio

Walk into the new Barre South studio in Carolina Park and you can already feel it — even before the first playlist drops.

The light. The open room. The front desk inside the studio instead of tucked away. It’s all by design. Owner and founder Brett Dunevant wants zero separation between her team and her people.

“I never want anyone to feel judged or intimidated,” she says. “We’re known for being welcoming. Everybody talks to everybody.”

On December 1, that energy becomes official when Barre South opens its third location, this time in Mount Pleasant’s Carolina Park.

It’s a long way from where Brett started — and not just geographically.

Brett was born in Charleston, but grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia. Her connection to the Lowcountry came through years of family vacations to Wild Dunes.

“Charleston was always the place I loved,” she says. “I knew I wanted to be here one day.”

She danced growing up, minored in dance at James Madison University, and like a lot of former dancers, eventually landed in a big-box gym — where she was paying for a membership and… not going.

Then she found barre.

It clicked. Hard.

The workout gave her the structure and strength she wasn’t getting from treadmills, plus a hit of that performance energy she missed from dance. Group class. Great music. Women feeding off each other’s effort. A tight-knit studio in Richmond where the owner knew everyone’s name.

“I loved the challenge and how quickly I was getting stronger,” she says. “But I also loved the community.”

On a trip back to Charleston in 2014, taking barre classes while vacationing in Wild Dunes, an idea landed:

What if she brought her own version of this to Charleston?

On the drive back to Richmond, Brett and her husband made a pact: sit at a bar, have a drink, and make a decision. They’d either toast to staying put — or to moving to Charleston and opening a studio.

They chose the leap.

Brett and her husband, Brandon, moved to Mount Pleasant in 2015, knowing almost no one and with no built-in following. Barre South wasn’t a franchise. It wasn’t a known brand. It was just her and Brandon.

The first studio — on Coleman Boulevard — opened in May 2016 after an almost year-long buildout.

She found her first instructors on Craigslist. Rented space in a ballet studio to audition and train them while her own studio was still under construction. Built the website. Built the class formats. Built the brand from zero.

Word spread fast.

Friends told friends. Instagram started to matter. And Brett made it easy to try:

By year two, Barre South was ready to double.

Brett signed a lease for a second location in the still-early WestEdge development downtown. It was a risk — there wasn’t much there yet — but she believed in the area and in the growing community she’d built.

The second studio opened in 2018.

Eighteen months later, the world shut down.

COVID could have been the end of Barre South. Fitness studios across the country closed their doors for good.

Instead, Brett grabbed a laptop, walked into an empty studio, and figured it out in real time.

“I didn’t even know what Zoom was,” she laughs. “But day one of shutdown, we were on it.”

Clients used countertops and chairs as barres. No weights? No problem — wine bottles and soup cans did the trick. One live class pulled 100 people onto a single Zoom.

The crucial part: her members stayed. They kept their memberships active when it would’ve been easy to cancel.

That’s what community looks like in the hardest moments.

Fast-forward to today. Brett, Brandon and their kids still live just a few minutes from her original Coleman studio, but lately she’s been spending most of her time in North Mount Pleasant.

“I’ve made a point to meet all our neighbors,” she says. “People at Craft House across the street, folks in the shops nearby — everyone’s so friendly and down to earth. It feels like the right place.”

Pre-sales for Carolina Park have already beaten Barre South’s goals. The new spot will offer:

And yes — all three locations are included in a membership.

If barre intimidates you, Brett wants to fix that.

Think:

You won’t hear a lot of ballet terminology. No one’s expecting a pirouette. You will feel your thighs, glutes, and abs working in ways a treadmill never quite finds.

Classes are designed for all ages and levels. There are always modifications — including for pregnancy. Brett herself took barre through the end of her own pregnancy.

“It’s an intense workout,” she says. “You’re not walking in here for a slow, easy stretch. But we meet you where you are.”

For the Carolina Park launch, Barre South is rolling out some strong deals:

In other words: plenty of low-risk ways to see if this is your thing.

Brett isn’t ready to map out studio number four on the record, but she doesn’t pretend this is the end of the road either.

“We’re always open to expanding,” she says. “This probably isn’t our last studio.”

For now, the focus is simple: open the doors at Carolina Park, crank the music, and welcome in a whole new corner of Mount Pleasant.

No cliques. No judgment. Just a room full of people getting stronger — together — one pulse at a time.