‘Dance’ Outfits No Easy Step for Tompkins

The Movie: “Dance With Me.”

The Setup: When Ruby Sinclair (Vanessa L. Williams), a small-time dance instructor and salsa dance competitor, meets an attractive man from Cuba, Rafael Infante (Chayanne), the dance studio’s handyman, she puts some bounce in her steps.

The Costume Designer: Joe I. Tompkins, whose credits include “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Murphy’s Romance,” “Harlem Nights,” “Cross Creek” and the television movies “Eleanor and Franklin,” “Eleanor And Franklin: The White House Years” and HBO’s “Titanic.”

The Shoes: Sure, you want a sexy dance dress to dance salsa, but you could probably wear overalls as long as you wore the right shoes. The dancing shoes in this movie have spirit--and strength. The proper salsa shoe is high-heeled with good support, including steel posts and braces in the heels. They may be open- or closed-toed, and they’re strappy. Many are also sparkly.

“Shoes are a big deal,” says Tompkins, who used footwear from major dance shoe companies, including Champion, Elegance and Supradance. “They are incredibly engineered,” he says. “The straps are all placed so you won’t slip or fall.”

“You feel better in a heel,” confirms director Randa Haines, herself a salsa aficionado. “It looks sexier and pushes your center of gravity forward.”

For the dance competition finale, dancers went through crates of shoes because so many were flattened during filming.

“You break straps, heels snap and things get stretched out,” Tompkins says.

Shoe de Resistance: Williams’ Ruby wears only high heels, the actress’ real-life preference.

“Whenever I saw her getting dressed, she wore high-heeled sandals that showed the movement of the foot. She doesn’t like chunky shoes,” Tompkins says. “She likes shoes that accent the shape of the leg, that force you to look at the leg.” For her dance competition number, Williams donned amazing, towering silver-and-black, crystal-studded sandals that were as solid as work boots.

Her Look: Williams wears two kinds of dresses--dresses so tight that they reveal every muscle, or fitted dresses with a slightly flippy hem that “pop,” as Tompkins puts it, when she moves. Fabrics shimmer in such garments as a tank dress made from an unusual turquoise hologram fabric.

“If a dress didn’t accent or reveal shape and movement, it was a dead dress,” says the designer. “And if the fabric had no life other than color, it was dead.”

Trivia: Williams’ crystal-embellished competition dress was designed by Jean Marc Genereux, one of the competition dancers who appear in the film. Competition styles change dramatically from year to year, so Tompkins felt it was essential to put Williams in the most up-to-the-minute look. Indeed, he had designed another dress for her to wear but realized it was too, well, last year.

“By the time we shot the scene, dance competition clothes had changed. I was still thinking beads and sequins and it’s crystal stones now,” he said.

When he saw the dresses that Genereux, who designs his wife’s dresses, brought to the set, Tompkins made the change. The ensemble also includes one crystal wrist band; the second wrist band was called into action to moor Williams’ hair switch.

His Look: “Chayanne feels that he knows what his best colors are, and if you try to do anything other than black, white or hot colors, he is not receptive,” Tompkins says. “And he was right. Any cool tones I tried on him didn’t look right.” That explains the look for Chayanne’s two big dance moments, one a white dinner jacket worn with a hot pink shirt and black pants, and, for the competition, a black satin shirt and black pants.

You Should Know: At the dance competition, you might get the feeling from the preponderance of sequins and beads that you’ve entered a Bob Mackie universe, and you have. Many of the costumes were rented from Mackie as well as from designer Bill Hargate.

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* PARTNERS, PALS: The creative duo behind “Dance With Me.” See Weekend Calendar, Page 10