What makes Dirty Dancing memorable

HONG KONG — There have been many memorable dance scenes created for the stage and I am sure that the ones made for Dirty Dancing surely rank among the best. There is such grace, so much abandon, such discipline exhibited by the young group of performers in the touring company of the musical last Friday, May 9, at the Hong Kong Cultural Center. The show wound up its HK run yesterday, will next visit Singapore and then hit the CCP Main Theater in Manila on July 4. I can already hear the oohs and aahs over how elegant and how daring every move is in this West End and Broadway success.

Dirty Dancing is based on the blockbuster film that starred Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. It is centered on Baby, the 17-year-old girl who summers in a Catskill resort with her family in 1963. While there she meets a dance instructor, Johnny. He teaches her how to dance. They fall in love and in the process bring into open the prejudices and the pretensions that the supposedly enlightened middle-class nurture inside themselves at that time. This tale, its music and of course, the dancing, have fascinated fans all over the world for many years. It was adapted for the stage by the original screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein in 2004 when it opened in London to huge commercial success. This show is what we will be getting soon.

Arriving will be the talented South African cast led by Gareth Bailey as Johnny, Bryony Whitfield as Baby and Mila De Biaggi as Penny. Judging from my memory of the way Cynthia Rhodes did the role in the movie, I thought that De Biaggi is too Dresden pretty to be the pregnant dance partner but she can act and is an extraordinarily gifted dancer. Gareth, tall and strong, and Bryony, perky and petite, also fantastic dancers who can act, are all that I imagined Johnny and Baby should be. They bring great chemistry to their roles.

This trio gets competent support from what must be one of the most hardworking batches of actors, singers and dancers I have ever seen. Just try counting the number of costume changes when you watch the show and you will know what I mean. If you want more proof, you can imagine how easy those dancers make the spirited mambo look or how the band can go from a sultry Merengue to a soulful In The Still of The Night without missing a beat. And of course, the show is Dirty Dancing, and just like the movie, we can love it again and again.

From the way I see it, Dirty Dancing, on stage, was not really written as a musical play but as a tribute to the 1987 motion picture. Thinking in the sense of conventional theater writing, this means that Dirty Dancing has too many short, disjointed scenes that do not allow for deeper character development. Things can also get really busy because of this. There are too many characters coming and going, and songs that can detract from the development of the plot.

On the other hand though, this treatment means that this Dirty Dancing is indeed the classic story on stage that it is touted to be. This is because, nearly all of the memorable scenes from the iconic motion picture have been retained. And that includes the dialogue. Everything from Baby’s intro of, “That was the summer of ’63 when everybody called me Baby and it didn’t occur to me to mind.” And down to Johnny’s “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” to the way Baby’s father Dr. Houseman, summed up his daughter’s transformation, “You looked wonderful up there,” are all there. And how the audience loved those.

And the music. There is something so sweet about the songs of the early ’60s. Elvis was already too much and parents were suddenly confronted with R&B. The music of young, black America was distrusted and even banned because kids loved the earthy sound and might get unwholesome ideas to match. Little did they know that The Beatles was just around the corner and would change pop music forever.

Dirty Dancing freezes this moment with an excellent line-up of hits from the period, most of them performed by a band on stage or in the background by the artists of the original recordings. It is an incredible nostalgia trip. Save The Last Dance For Me, In The Still of The Night (I’ll Remember), If You Were The Only Girl In The World, Hey Baby, Love Is Strange, Hey! Baby, Besame Mucho and others.

And including some new stuff. I know there are girls out there who got to dreaming of finding a Johnny who will teach them how to dance after the show. Perhaps, they can do it to the tune of Eric Carmen’s beautiful ’70s classic, Hungry Eyes.

Then maybe if those Babys are good and learn fast enough, they can next dance to (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life. The Academy Award-winning theme from the Dirty Dancing continues to thrill listeners to this day. This song has the most contagious last-song virus ever heard. More so when you are watching Johnny and Baby dance on stage and you are waiting for that climactic lift.

Dream of the dance and prepare to move to the beat. It will take a lifetime for you to learn how to do that. But that should not stop you from having the fantasy.

“I’ve had the time of my life, oh I never felt like this before/ yes, I swear, it’s the truth and I owe it all to you/ I’ve had the time of my life…”