TELEVISION / Production notes

Choreographer Quinney Sacks on producing the dance routines in Lipstick on Your Collar (Sun, C4): 'We were lucky to have two weeks to work on the dance numbers before shooting started. The young people had been auditioned for their dancing as well as their acting, though the others just had acting auditions and we hoped for the best. You can't pre-plan too much of the movement when you're choreographing actors because the characters' personalities, which they are in the process of working out, should be reflected in the way they dance. Also, you don't know how they move - with professional dancers you do. Dennis (Potter) is terribly specific in the script: he knows which recordings of certain songs he wants and gives pretty specific stage directions, so in a sense he choreographs it. The lip-synching is very, very hard and the only way of getting it right is by hard work - the cast all used to go home with a Sony Walkman on, so they'd be spot on. I also choreographed The Singing Detective, but each production has its difficulties. This time it was the amount of numbers we had to do in a short time which had us practising in the dressing-rooms.'

(Photograph omitted)