About the Studio
About the Studio
In 1966, a 14-year-old girl in Youngsville, La opened a dance school in her mother’s daycare. Carita Romero began her school by teaching on Saturday mornings only her mom worked as her assistant. In 1968, she held her first official dance revue.
While in college at USL and while still teaching dance full time Monday thru Saturday, Carita bought property and had a building built on Industrial Parkway and moved her school from Youngsville to Lafayette. At the same time, she opened a satellite school in Erath, La and taught classes there two nights per week.
In 1976, Sugar ‘n Spice moved to its current location on Beadle Road with all classes under one roof. Growth and population expansion into surrounding areas resulted in SNS returning to Youngsville with a second location in what had been her dad’s lumber yard building. During all of this growth Carita Romero became Carita Pearce and operated two dance school locations until she had her two sons. With the addition of two boys, she went back to dance instruction at only one location and “cut back” on teaching by adding faculty members.
It was in 2004 that Carita retired from dance and sold the school to a former student, Ashley Guidry Sonnier. Ashley kept both schools opened for a number of years , but eventually combined them under one roof. Ashley continued many of the ideas and traditions established by Carita. Those concepts including promoting SNS as a dance family, teaching both life and dance lessons, and providing a balanced approach to revues, outside performances, competitions, and exposure to travel experiences as well as making memories that last a lifetime. Ashley had a run of 13 great revues until family obligations took priority.
In 2017, SNS was sold to Lisa Taquino. Lisa is a former teacher at SNS under both Carita and Ashley. She assumed ownership with experience as both a teacher and a SNS dance mom. She always thought she might want to own a dance school one day and took reins in September of 2017. In May of 2018 Lisa ran her first revue which also happened to be the 50th Dance Revue Anniversary for SNS. It blew people away with the choreography, costumes and the surprise dancers which included SNS graduates from the last 50 years. Lisa’s goal is to keep Sugar n’ Spice dancing for at least another 50 years!!