Creating costume drama section C

This season Jason Smith tore open the jacket of his dinner suit to reveal a lycra Spandex Zentai. Smith and his dance partner, Luda Kroitor, had been quick-stepping to the Spiderman theme song. Kroitor's frock had crystal webbing detail across the shoulder, complete with a glittering redback spider.

To enable the quick strip, Nelson replaced Smith's shirt buttons with velcro and sewed cuffs and a shirtfront into the jacket to make it a single garment with the appearance of a jacket over a shirt.

It is one of many trade secrets. Despite gasps of concern from onlookers when the famously curvaceous Gabrielle Richens danced last year in a dress that barely concealed her attributes, Nelson and Robertson knew they were safe. "I was very sure that nothing could fall out," Nelson says. "It might look like it's going to pop out, but it can't."

Female dancers are "lifted" and given a decolletage with built-in bras and padding. Dresses have built-in undergarments, bras and bodysuits, so they don't ride up when the dancer is lifted or spun. Men's shirts are often buttoned beneath their groins.

Says Robertson: "That's the difference between dressmaking for dance costumes and dressmaking in general. You know how to keep people in outfits when they are dancing. If you went out there in a normal pair of knickers . . ."

According to Nelson, Spandex Zentai costumes are a vital component of Dancing with the Stars. "If you were to take those costumes away and put the people in just an ordinary little dress you'd see all their faults, their bad dancing and everything, much more apparently than if you were looking at the fabulous dresses and the stones and the earrings and the hair and make-up," she says. "I reckon you wouldn't be getting the ratings we get without them."

"It's the same in competitive dancing," says Robertson. "Costumes, I think, are just so influential. I've seen them make or break couples before. Sometimes if you see a disgusting dress you kind of notice that and you don't look at the dancing so much."

A Dancing with the Stars special screens on Tuesday at 7.30pm on Channel Seven.