Blog

Team: Diamond Gems
Coach: Jennifer Keller
Location: Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Style: College Dance Team 

Style: Avatar 

As we head into competition season, we've gotten a lot of requests for the crowd pleasing Transition Costume.  Transition Costumes deliver that WOW factor to the crowd (and the judges!) that everyone likes to see. But they're also COMPLICATED! How do you even begin to design one? Find out what the most effective transition costumes are, and some tips for designing them below! 

Team: Kansas City Chiefs Cheerleaders
Director: Stephanie Judah
Location: Kansas City, Missouri
Style: NFL Cheer

Styles: 202 Long Line Crop, Brookfield Short Skirt, Jolynn, Roseangela Leotard

For all our color lovers and trend watchers, The Line Up chose a color of the year that embodies the current mood in dance!   We surveyed our designers, researched competitions, and took a nod from pop culture to determine the trend setting color for 2018. Here it is:

Team: Purdue Golduster Dance Team 
Captain: Katie Rehling
Location: Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Style: Collegiate Dance Team

Rhinestones are the perfect finishing touch to any costume, but often the biggest question we hear is: how many rhinestones do I need? It's a tough question to figure out especially when:

• 100 gems sounds like a lot, but is actually on the low end of the price spectrum,
• Design illustrations can be poor representations of a finished rhinestone design because it's difficult to represent gem size and placement accurately,
• Minor tweaks in spacing can drastically effect the quantity of rhinestones.

Planning the new upcoming dance season is SO exciting!  Many times this means designing a new costume, which means a design consultation with your dance costume design company. You will likely be getting a lot of information out of this design consultation- but how can you prepare beforehand? Find out here!

Team: Prescott High School Dance Team
Director/Head Coach: Samantha Schoen
Location: Prescott, WI.
Style: High School Dance Team

Floral Mesh Leotard, Mesh Leotard, Tribal Mesh Leotard, and Kiri Leotard. 

It's that time of year - School is back in session, game days are starting to pick up again and all we can think about are this year's upcoming competition costumes! As we head into our busy season (a.k.a. your competition season!), we are overwhelmed with the amazing costume designs and inspiration that our creative customers and designers come up with! It truly is inspiring seeing all these beautiful costumes go out the door and onto the competition floor.

Check out what we've found are the Top 6 Jazz & Contemporary Dance Costume trends for 2018:

Behind the scenes at one of our recent photo shoots at Steve Lucas Photography

Once fall rolls around, we know the first thing on the to-do list as a newly formed dance team is pictures!  When it comes to photoshoots, TLU has definitely had lots of practice.  With over 8 photoshoots a year, we've got things down to a science!  

And we don't do it alone either!  With a little help from the experts below, we've compiled some of our best tips for getting your best photos as a dance team. Read on to hear what the experts have to say.

• Pam Gleason - Our photoshoot choreographer, Pam, is a master at creative posing!  When not working at The Line Up, she's also an instructor at Dance Arts Centre and co-founder of Matrixx Pro.

• Steve Lucas - We've been working with Steve Lucas Photography for over 10 years, and with his 20+ years of experience, he has perfected the art of capturing the perfect dance action shot!  

• Dawn Ruschmeyer - Our resident photo editor and Photoshop Wizard, Dawn is also Steve Lucas's assistant and photo editor.