Onward | Flight-Inspired Dance Photoshoot | Rage Box Dance Center

For the past few years, Des has been working with Rage Box Dance Center and has become their resident photographer for promotional shoots and recital photos. She's been known to work with groups of dance friends for fun, team-building shoots and this Spring a few dance moms contacted Des about doing a shoot for their daughter's team.

These group shoots provide for a very fun team outing, but each dancer also gets a variety of solo images as well - a combination of headshots and dance photos gives them some fresh new content for their social feeds and it gives their parents some frame-worthy shots to update their walls at home.

Taking dancers out of the studio, is one of Des' favorite things to do and Team Purple at Rage Box is a fiery group of dancers. Their maturity and poise while dancing never ceases to amaze a crowd! Instead of going the traditional route with using just Rage Box gear for unifying the group photos, Des inquired about their costumes for the year to see if we couldn't put an editorial spin on this group shoot.

This year, Team Purple's contemporary piece was titled "Onward", choreographed by Danielle Sten-Guillermo. The second Des was shown the girl's costume for the piece, she had an idea. What better way to showcase a flight-inspired dance, than with an actual plane?!

Then came the tricky part... where on earth was Des going to get a plane?! After posting on Facebook that she was "in search of a plane", she was quickly reminded that her uncle, Ken DeFontes owns a vintage, 1947 Piper J-3 Cub! Ken so graciously allowed Des and the girls to use the plane for their session.

The many moving pieces in this shoot came together beautifully. Des' dance shoots keep on getting more and more creative and I'm so here for it! Here is Team Purple from Rage Box Dance Center.

Special shoutout to Danielle Sten-Guillermo herself, for being the brains behind the choreography. Des asked her to accompany her on the shoot so she could incorporate some posing that matched the mood for the piece. Believe it or not the shots below, Des shot as test shots while Danielle was playing around with some shapes and movement for the girls. She couldn't help but include these shots in the gallery of the girls' mentor.