Red Moon
05-12-2008, 08:04 AM
Strictly's backstage secrets: Which dancer asks for a shorter dress every week?This series of Strictly Come Dancing has been hailed as the best yet. The standard of the celebrity dancing - and the fact that there is no clear winner - has brought real suspense.
And each week as Bruce Forsyth's jokes get worse and worse, the sparkling costumes and the brilliant choreography just get better and better.
Here, Lisa Sewards is granted rare access to the teams of professionals who have to make sure the BBC's hit TV show runs smoothly.
The costumes
In a bleak industrial estate in Croydon, a team of dressmakers are working their fingers to the bone to put the sparkle back into Saturday nights.
Su Judd, the costume designer for Strictly Come Dancing, and her team have been creating stunning outfits for the professional dancers and stars since the show's first series.
There are only three days to go before the next live show and tensions are running high among the 11 designers who are busy with final touches to the sketches, while the pattern cutters are snipping furiously.
From the room next door comes the whirr of 20 sewing machines.
One man with an eyepiece is painstakingly sticking sequins, one by one, on to a breathtaking pink and silver dress to be worn by Rachel Stevens for a waltz.
He is one of eight 'stoners' who work through the night to sew hundreds of thousands of rhinestones and crystals on to the dresses.
Fabric, from sequin, satin, mesh, lace and fringes are flung all over the place and a box is spilling over with feather boas. It's controlled chaos.
Professional dancer Camilla Dallerup is casting a critical eye over a yellow and orange dress she will be wearing for the quickstep. She is also admiring
a one-off pair of golden sandals made especially for her.
'I adore all of my dresses,' she says. 'And I really fancied a gold pair of shoes as a bit of fun for the Cha Cha Cha but they're not normally allowed.'
The celebrities are allowed to wear only neutral sandals so the judges' eyes are not distracted from any unseemly footwork.
'But in the last series, pop star Alesha Dixon - the reigning champion - refused to wear them,' says Su, 41. 'We had to pin her down and wrestle her into them.'
Hanging on a rail is pop star Rachel Stevens' short dress covered in 7,000 gold Swarovski crystals, for the jive.
'It's very low cut on the bust and on the back,' says Su. 'Rachel was quite scared of coming back into the public eye so she wanted to keep her style very simple and elegant.
'But as the series has got under way, she's become more daring. We now chop off a lot of her dresses to make them shorter.'
The female celebrities taking part meet Su and her team one month before the show starts. Su spends five hours with them before designing them 14 dresses for the show in case they make it to the final.
'Pop star Heather Small told us on the first day: "I don't do short dresses." We said: "Gosh, you're on the wrong show. The more of your leg you show the better, to give you height."
Then we gave her lots of long dresses but she soon changed her mind and went for a short dress for the Cha Cha Cha.
'Overall, though, this year's style is more elegant than previous series.'
All the dresses are couture dancewear, made on a Lycra leotard. 'They're very forgiving,' explains Su.
'We can add to the bosoms, create scaffolding to support bigger busts and we can elasticate the waist to make it thinner.'
Each dress is only ever worn once, so it's good to know that these creations have a new lease of life after the show when they are sold to the public.
TV presenter Christine Bleakley's gold tango dress sold yesterday for £1,900, at the headquarters of Dance Sport International in Croydon where the BBC design team work.
Anyone can buy the dresses. Rachel's salsa dress was exported to Jordan and her Viennese Waltz dress is being considered by a buyer for her 18-year-old daughter's prom.
'We were selling a salsa dress when a girl walked in and said: "Oh gosh, this is Lisa Snowdon's dress, Mum, I've got to have it." I thought: "I'm really sorry, Mum, that's just cost you £1,300." '
For this year's show, 41-year-old Su and her team have been working around the clock to beat the deadlines and create up to 33 dresses a week.
Su says: 'Nothing has ever snapped, thankfully, but dancer Lilia Kopylova had a near miss in 2005 when the catch on her dress unfastened. She had to dance the samba with cricketer Darren Gough while clutching her dress.'
One of the biggest jobs is keeping up with the weight loss of the celebrity contestants. 'John Sergeant lost about two stone and we had to take in his trousers every week. In the end, I made a new pair for him.'
In this series, Su says the male contestants are happy to wear clothes the designers choose. 'I told swimmer Mark Foster I was going to put him in fishnets as a joke but he didn't bat an eyelid.
'They are happy to get more sexy and revealing as the show goes on.'
The judges
The Strictly judges say they thrive on four ingredients for the show - raw emotion, back-biting, bitchiness and humiliation. That's only while live on air though, because behind the scenes, they are secretly all big softies.
Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli and Craig Revel Horwood say one of the best parts of the show is relaxing in the BBC bar afterwards with the entire production team and contestants.
It's there that Craig enjoys eating sausage and mash with the celebrities. Despite his harsh criticism of last year's contestant, Penny Lancaster, she and her husband Rod Stewart would still join him for supper.
However, since being physically attacked in the bar by Max, the husband of Dead Ringers' star Jan Ravens, Craig now always takes his PA for protection. 'I don't like confrontation of that kind so now I take my assistant just in case.
I also need help to fight off all the professional dancers who queue up around me, demanding: "Why did you score this? Why did you say that?"'
Arlene Phillips shuns any backstage mingling. She heads straight home after the show to discuss it with her 17-year-old daughter Abi.
Arlene says: 'I may look glamorous on my visible top half during the live show but beneath the judging desk I'm always in my jeans because I just feel far more comfortable.'
She acts as both peacemaker and troublemaker on the judging panel.
'I love being the only female. I'm stronger than any of the men and enjoy putting them down. I've known Bruno for 30 years. He's a great friend, but a ridiculous judge. He just waves his arms and shouts.
'Then there's miserable, mealy-mouthed Craig. Unlike me, he courts publicity. As for Len - he's too generous with his marking because he doesn't like to hurt anybody.'
Craig admits that when he once worked for Arlene in a show, she reduced him to a nervous wreck. 'She was pure evil,' he says.
'I'm a very harsh judge,' admits Arlene, 'but I also secretly talk to the professionals to suggest they work on specific weak points to give them a helping hand. It's a show based on camaraderie after all.'
The choreography
Long before the series begins the producers decide which celebrity is partnered with which professional - based on height, dancing ability and the chemistry between the personalities.
While on TV the professional dancers are credited for creating the steps, there are other experts behind the scenes.
Richard Marcel is one. He choreographs group dances and helps the professionals in their routines.
He says: 'I have to try to predict who's going to get voted out so that I can play to their strengths and create clever steps to cover up weaknesses and help them stay in.
'I knew with John Sergeant that I could do more or less what I wanted because he would only do it in his own way anyhow. But chef Gary Rhodes would get stressed if the routine was too complicated as he's a perfectionist.'
One of the best ways of looking good on Strictly is for the professional male dancers to show off their girls by picking them up and spinning them around.
Richard, 38, says: 'Professional dancer Brendan Cole likes to do this because he wants to look like he can do the complicated stuff and this is the easiest way to give that impression.'
Sometimes there are clashes between the choreographers and professional dancers, particularly the highly strung Brendan.
'But his dance partner, Lisa Snowdon, always has a smile to make it all worthwhile.'
Hair & make-up
In charge of hair and make-up, Lisa Armstrong is screaming into a walkie-talkie: 'Two minutes to air.' The teams of make-up girls troop off like lines of ants, chanting: 'Powder, powder, lip gloss, lip gloss.'
The contestants file into one of two rooms - one for hair, the other make-up.
The last-minute preparations are vital as Lisa, new to the series, has decided on a more fashion-led fresh look this year rather than the heavily coated faces traditional with the dancing world.
'We don't use heavy lip liner, eyeliner or gloss,' says Lisa, 32. 'During the dress rehearsal on the day of the show, they'll walk around with one eye done and half the foundation, as that is perfected at the last minute to avoid it having to be reapplied and getting too thick.'
The female celebs look more sparkly and tanned than they did a few weeks ago. 'They were all nervous of the glitter at first,' recalls Lisa. 'Rachel Stevens wouldn't come near it. Now she says: "More glitter, please." They get more daring as the show progresses
'The same goes for the fake tan. At first, many of them were scared of turning orange, particularly Jodie Kidd. Then, as they've seen themselves looking peaky in the playbacks, they've been asking for more and more tan each week.'
All the females have to wear false eyelashes to give more camera impact. 'A few of them refused at first. Jessie Wallace said they made her eyes feel too heavy. Now all the girls love fluttering their eyelashes.'
Hair is styled according to the dance and design of the costumes. 'Our motto is to have 100 hairpins even if you just need ten - because, God forbid, if a stray piece of hair or hairpiece flew off mid-dance, can you imagine?
'If the girls are doing a Salsa dance, they can't wear lip gloss as their hair would stick to their face during the twirls. But for dramatic dances such as the Paso Doble, make-up is heavier and darker.'
Rugby star Austin Healey likes to hang around chatting to the makeup and hair team, offering them chocolates, but most of the male contestants just have a dab of foundation on their faces.
'We gave actor Tom Chambers's hair a slick side-parting so he looked like Fred Astaire for his ballroom dances,' says Lisa.
'Anton Du Beke and Brendan Cole come in at the last minute, crying: 'Quick, do me.' So it's a bit of hairspray then off they go.'
The band
Once the music tracks that the couples will dance to have been selected, it's the job of musical director Dave Arch and his 15-piece band to make sure the tempo and beat of the music exactly mirror that of the dancers.
The day after the live event, Dave transcribes the next show's music for every instrument. He is one of three keyboard players and also conducts the band.
He says: 'I have a lot to worry about. I have to edit the tracks down to one-and-a-half minutes to time exactly with the length of each dance or it would be a disaster.'
There are four run-throughs before they go on air but the band play for the first time together at the dress rehearsal on the day of the live show.
'We have to be fully aware of the tempo required by the professional dancers otherwise we might be too slow for them and if they stop, they expect us to stop too which can be a problem,' says Dave, 46.
'Brendan Cole likes a faster tempo, while Anton Du Beke likes to slow things down a bit more.'
On top of his other responsibilities, Dave has to be mindful of the pitch of songs for the band's four singers, two men and two women.
'The band don't like performing Michael Jackson songs as they are hard even for our male singer who has a very high pitch. Similarly, the Latin songs can be tricky as they have to learn the vocals phonetically as only one speaks Spanish.
'But as a band, we are in our own world - we have no idea who is a good dancer because we haven't got time to watch them.'
Source: Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1092109/Strictlys-backstage-secrets-Which-dancer-asks-shorter-dress-week.html)
And each week as Bruce Forsyth's jokes get worse and worse, the sparkling costumes and the brilliant choreography just get better and better.
Here, Lisa Sewards is granted rare access to the teams of professionals who have to make sure the BBC's hit TV show runs smoothly.
The costumes
In a bleak industrial estate in Croydon, a team of dressmakers are working their fingers to the bone to put the sparkle back into Saturday nights.
Su Judd, the costume designer for Strictly Come Dancing, and her team have been creating stunning outfits for the professional dancers and stars since the show's first series.
There are only three days to go before the next live show and tensions are running high among the 11 designers who are busy with final touches to the sketches, while the pattern cutters are snipping furiously.
From the room next door comes the whirr of 20 sewing machines.
One man with an eyepiece is painstakingly sticking sequins, one by one, on to a breathtaking pink and silver dress to be worn by Rachel Stevens for a waltz.
He is one of eight 'stoners' who work through the night to sew hundreds of thousands of rhinestones and crystals on to the dresses.
Fabric, from sequin, satin, mesh, lace and fringes are flung all over the place and a box is spilling over with feather boas. It's controlled chaos.
Professional dancer Camilla Dallerup is casting a critical eye over a yellow and orange dress she will be wearing for the quickstep. She is also admiring
a one-off pair of golden sandals made especially for her.
'I adore all of my dresses,' she says. 'And I really fancied a gold pair of shoes as a bit of fun for the Cha Cha Cha but they're not normally allowed.'
The celebrities are allowed to wear only neutral sandals so the judges' eyes are not distracted from any unseemly footwork.
'But in the last series, pop star Alesha Dixon - the reigning champion - refused to wear them,' says Su, 41. 'We had to pin her down and wrestle her into them.'
Hanging on a rail is pop star Rachel Stevens' short dress covered in 7,000 gold Swarovski crystals, for the jive.
'It's very low cut on the bust and on the back,' says Su. 'Rachel was quite scared of coming back into the public eye so she wanted to keep her style very simple and elegant.
'But as the series has got under way, she's become more daring. We now chop off a lot of her dresses to make them shorter.'
The female celebrities taking part meet Su and her team one month before the show starts. Su spends five hours with them before designing them 14 dresses for the show in case they make it to the final.
'Pop star Heather Small told us on the first day: "I don't do short dresses." We said: "Gosh, you're on the wrong show. The more of your leg you show the better, to give you height."
Then we gave her lots of long dresses but she soon changed her mind and went for a short dress for the Cha Cha Cha.
'Overall, though, this year's style is more elegant than previous series.'
All the dresses are couture dancewear, made on a Lycra leotard. 'They're very forgiving,' explains Su.
'We can add to the bosoms, create scaffolding to support bigger busts and we can elasticate the waist to make it thinner.'
Each dress is only ever worn once, so it's good to know that these creations have a new lease of life after the show when they are sold to the public.
TV presenter Christine Bleakley's gold tango dress sold yesterday for £1,900, at the headquarters of Dance Sport International in Croydon where the BBC design team work.
Anyone can buy the dresses. Rachel's salsa dress was exported to Jordan and her Viennese Waltz dress is being considered by a buyer for her 18-year-old daughter's prom.
'We were selling a salsa dress when a girl walked in and said: "Oh gosh, this is Lisa Snowdon's dress, Mum, I've got to have it." I thought: "I'm really sorry, Mum, that's just cost you £1,300." '
For this year's show, 41-year-old Su and her team have been working around the clock to beat the deadlines and create up to 33 dresses a week.
Su says: 'Nothing has ever snapped, thankfully, but dancer Lilia Kopylova had a near miss in 2005 when the catch on her dress unfastened. She had to dance the samba with cricketer Darren Gough while clutching her dress.'
One of the biggest jobs is keeping up with the weight loss of the celebrity contestants. 'John Sergeant lost about two stone and we had to take in his trousers every week. In the end, I made a new pair for him.'
In this series, Su says the male contestants are happy to wear clothes the designers choose. 'I told swimmer Mark Foster I was going to put him in fishnets as a joke but he didn't bat an eyelid.
'They are happy to get more sexy and revealing as the show goes on.'
The judges
The Strictly judges say they thrive on four ingredients for the show - raw emotion, back-biting, bitchiness and humiliation. That's only while live on air though, because behind the scenes, they are secretly all big softies.
Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli and Craig Revel Horwood say one of the best parts of the show is relaxing in the BBC bar afterwards with the entire production team and contestants.
It's there that Craig enjoys eating sausage and mash with the celebrities. Despite his harsh criticism of last year's contestant, Penny Lancaster, she and her husband Rod Stewart would still join him for supper.
However, since being physically attacked in the bar by Max, the husband of Dead Ringers' star Jan Ravens, Craig now always takes his PA for protection. 'I don't like confrontation of that kind so now I take my assistant just in case.
I also need help to fight off all the professional dancers who queue up around me, demanding: "Why did you score this? Why did you say that?"'
Arlene Phillips shuns any backstage mingling. She heads straight home after the show to discuss it with her 17-year-old daughter Abi.
Arlene says: 'I may look glamorous on my visible top half during the live show but beneath the judging desk I'm always in my jeans because I just feel far more comfortable.'
She acts as both peacemaker and troublemaker on the judging panel.
'I love being the only female. I'm stronger than any of the men and enjoy putting them down. I've known Bruno for 30 years. He's a great friend, but a ridiculous judge. He just waves his arms and shouts.
'Then there's miserable, mealy-mouthed Craig. Unlike me, he courts publicity. As for Len - he's too generous with his marking because he doesn't like to hurt anybody.'
Craig admits that when he once worked for Arlene in a show, she reduced him to a nervous wreck. 'She was pure evil,' he says.
'I'm a very harsh judge,' admits Arlene, 'but I also secretly talk to the professionals to suggest they work on specific weak points to give them a helping hand. It's a show based on camaraderie after all.'
The choreography
Long before the series begins the producers decide which celebrity is partnered with which professional - based on height, dancing ability and the chemistry between the personalities.
While on TV the professional dancers are credited for creating the steps, there are other experts behind the scenes.
Richard Marcel is one. He choreographs group dances and helps the professionals in their routines.
He says: 'I have to try to predict who's going to get voted out so that I can play to their strengths and create clever steps to cover up weaknesses and help them stay in.
'I knew with John Sergeant that I could do more or less what I wanted because he would only do it in his own way anyhow. But chef Gary Rhodes would get stressed if the routine was too complicated as he's a perfectionist.'
One of the best ways of looking good on Strictly is for the professional male dancers to show off their girls by picking them up and spinning them around.
Richard, 38, says: 'Professional dancer Brendan Cole likes to do this because he wants to look like he can do the complicated stuff and this is the easiest way to give that impression.'
Sometimes there are clashes between the choreographers and professional dancers, particularly the highly strung Brendan.
'But his dance partner, Lisa Snowdon, always has a smile to make it all worthwhile.'
Hair & make-up
In charge of hair and make-up, Lisa Armstrong is screaming into a walkie-talkie: 'Two minutes to air.' The teams of make-up girls troop off like lines of ants, chanting: 'Powder, powder, lip gloss, lip gloss.'
The contestants file into one of two rooms - one for hair, the other make-up.
The last-minute preparations are vital as Lisa, new to the series, has decided on a more fashion-led fresh look this year rather than the heavily coated faces traditional with the dancing world.
'We don't use heavy lip liner, eyeliner or gloss,' says Lisa, 32. 'During the dress rehearsal on the day of the show, they'll walk around with one eye done and half the foundation, as that is perfected at the last minute to avoid it having to be reapplied and getting too thick.'
The female celebs look more sparkly and tanned than they did a few weeks ago. 'They were all nervous of the glitter at first,' recalls Lisa. 'Rachel Stevens wouldn't come near it. Now she says: "More glitter, please." They get more daring as the show progresses
'The same goes for the fake tan. At first, many of them were scared of turning orange, particularly Jodie Kidd. Then, as they've seen themselves looking peaky in the playbacks, they've been asking for more and more tan each week.'
All the females have to wear false eyelashes to give more camera impact. 'A few of them refused at first. Jessie Wallace said they made her eyes feel too heavy. Now all the girls love fluttering their eyelashes.'
Hair is styled according to the dance and design of the costumes. 'Our motto is to have 100 hairpins even if you just need ten - because, God forbid, if a stray piece of hair or hairpiece flew off mid-dance, can you imagine?
'If the girls are doing a Salsa dance, they can't wear lip gloss as their hair would stick to their face during the twirls. But for dramatic dances such as the Paso Doble, make-up is heavier and darker.'
Rugby star Austin Healey likes to hang around chatting to the makeup and hair team, offering them chocolates, but most of the male contestants just have a dab of foundation on their faces.
'We gave actor Tom Chambers's hair a slick side-parting so he looked like Fred Astaire for his ballroom dances,' says Lisa.
'Anton Du Beke and Brendan Cole come in at the last minute, crying: 'Quick, do me.' So it's a bit of hairspray then off they go.'
The band
Once the music tracks that the couples will dance to have been selected, it's the job of musical director Dave Arch and his 15-piece band to make sure the tempo and beat of the music exactly mirror that of the dancers.
The day after the live event, Dave transcribes the next show's music for every instrument. He is one of three keyboard players and also conducts the band.
He says: 'I have a lot to worry about. I have to edit the tracks down to one-and-a-half minutes to time exactly with the length of each dance or it would be a disaster.'
There are four run-throughs before they go on air but the band play for the first time together at the dress rehearsal on the day of the live show.
'We have to be fully aware of the tempo required by the professional dancers otherwise we might be too slow for them and if they stop, they expect us to stop too which can be a problem,' says Dave, 46.
'Brendan Cole likes a faster tempo, while Anton Du Beke likes to slow things down a bit more.'
On top of his other responsibilities, Dave has to be mindful of the pitch of songs for the band's four singers, two men and two women.
'The band don't like performing Michael Jackson songs as they are hard even for our male singer who has a very high pitch. Similarly, the Latin songs can be tricky as they have to learn the vocals phonetically as only one speaks Spanish.
'But as a band, we are in our own world - we have no idea who is a good dancer because we haven't got time to watch them.'
Source: Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1092109/Strictlys-backstage-secrets-Which-dancer-asks-shorter-dress-week.html)