Dirty Dancing: Dance to Love0

Written by Parveen Maghera

“I’ve had the time of my life
 No I never felt like this before
 Yes I swear, it’s the truth
 And I owe it all to you.”

We take you back to the 60s, into the decade before the Beatles came, before John Kennedy was shot and before the hip­pies were in. It was the decade of the 1963 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 and the 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air. It was the decade of the twists and the turns, the Mambo and the Cha Cha, the ulti­mate Dirty Dancing.

Beautifully directed by Emile Ardolino, this 1987 film por­trays a rich under­stand­ing of dance. From the cos­tumes and make up used to the music and chore­og­ra­phy put in, Dirty Dancing makes one start tap­ping just from the seat, well, for me at least. This film pri­mar­ily focuses on the Mambo dance, where lead actor Patrick Swayze (Johnny) is por­trayed as a ver­sa­tile and strong dance part­ner who trains Jennifer Grey (Baby) for a Mambo act which Baby will­ingly agrees to fill in for a preg­nant dancer. And this is where their roman­tic love story begins dur­ing a sum­mer vaca­tion in Catskills Mountains.

As the story goes on, Johnny’s char­ac­ter devel­ops fur­ther, not as a trainer, but as a man who sur­vives on his dance, a man who is being used in a soci­ety of the riches, a man who hails no self-respect and a man who believes that “you can’t win no mat­ter what you do.” He is the antag­o­nist in the eyes of the antag­o­nists. He is the pro­tag­o­nist in the eyes of the pro­tag­o­nists. The rich don’t treat him the way he should be treated. Women use him. “They’re slip­ping their room keys in (his) hand two and three times a day.” No one really under­stands him apart from Baby. No body lis­tens to him apart from Baby. He is afraid to voice out for he may lose his job–the only rea­son behind his bread and butter.

What amazed me was that despite Baby’s gawky char­ac­ter in the film, she man­ages to learn and per­form the chore­og­ra­phy almost per­fectly. Well, it sure takes courage to learn the Mambo for some­one who “can’t even do the Merengue.” Performed mostly by the Dirty Dancers, The Fox Trot, Cha Cha and the Merengue caught my eye in the back­ground shots. Believe it or not, with­out these Dirty Dancers, Dirty Dancing could pos­si­bly lose the mean­ing of its title. Yes it is Dirty Dancing indeed, where there is almost hun­dred per­cent body con­tact between the cou­ples. Those sweet sim­plis­tic moves cre­ate that aura of romance in the air and they do get erotic, espe­cially between Johnny and Baby. This explains why the film is rated PG-13 and I must say, yes, it is quite sex­u­ally explicit.

This Dirty Dancing does not stop with just one film. Set in the back­drop of the Cuban rev­o­lu­tion, Guy Ferland’s Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights explores dirty danc­ing, the Cuban way.

In November 1958, Cuba was in the midst of a rev­o­lu­tion led by Fidel Castro, against the Batista Government, run by Fulgencio Batista. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights tells a story of a Cuban boy, whose life changes after his father dies in the midst of the rev­o­lu­tion, and an American girl, who befriends the Cuban boy, regard­less of the rev­o­lu­tion and of what­ever the American soci­ety may think.

This film, released in 2004, has a dif­fer­ent story, a dif­fer­ent plot and a dif­fer­ent chore­og­ra­phy but just as the pre­vi­ous film, it, indeed, lived up to its title.

The char­ac­ters of the leads some­what reflect Johnny’s and Baby’s but only to a cer­tain extent. Male lead, Diego Luna (Javier) is a Cuban boy who works as a waiter in Hotel Oceana. Romola Garai (Katey) is the female lead in this film, who leaves school back in America to set­tle down in Cuba because of her father’s job post­ing. Javier works for his fam­ily. The rev­o­lu­tion took away his father’s life and now he sup­ports his fam­ily. He is not allowed to mix with the guests, but hap­pens so with Katey. This costs him his job but Katey man­ages to find him a bet­ter way to earn money and that is through his dance.

Javier’s dance is unique. Watch him in La Rosa Negra, a Cuban club, and you would be awed. He is the Cuban boy with the Cuban moves. He moves and shakes like as if the music runs through his blood. He feels the music while he dances. Believe it or not, he makes me feel like danc­ing more than Johnny does. His body, arms, legs, feet, hands and head mas­ter a unique syn­chro­niza­tion that flows just from one indi­vid­ual to another! He isn’t the Mambo boy. He is the Cuban boy!

Katey knows the Fox Trot, the Mambo and the Cha Cha, to name a few. Nevertheless, she is attracted to the Cuban dance. She loves the way the Cubans move. She loves they way how the music resides in them while they shake. She wants to do it but she is shy. And she is afraid. However, through a dance com­pe­ti­tion they par­take in, both indi­vid­u­als see them­selves as who they weren’t before. This is some­thing sim­i­lar to Ardolino’s Dirty Dancing. They seek free­dom within them­selves as well as free­dom from the soci­ety. It is danc­ing for your free­dom, if that is the mes­sage to be put forward.

However, the Cuban Revolution also plays a part through­out the film. Cubans fight for their free­dom and find every way to save them­selves from the Batista Officers. Cubans love their coun­try and they are wil­ing to do any­thing for her. Javier’s broth­ers exem­plify their love for Cuba and join the rev­o­lu­tion to free Cuba from Batista’s hands, just as their father had tried. Hence, this film also high­lights the free­dom of Cuba. The final dance of the com­pe­ti­tion coin­cides on New Years Eve which is also the night Fulgencio Batista flees the coun­try, allow­ing Cuba to acquire her free­dom. Viva la revolución!

Thus this film car­ries the mean­ing of free­dom in two dif­fer­ent ways.

When it comes to the chem­istry between the cou­ple, it was quite a dis­ap­point­ment. No doubt did the dance cre­ate that aura of romance between them but it was a far cry from that between Johnny and Baby.

The chem­istry between Javier and Katey is sweet and inno­cent for that mat­ter. It makes view­ers think that they are too young for real love. Of course we were expect­ing some­thing as great as Johnny’s and Baby’s. However, it wasn’t so. Johnny’s and Baby’s chem­istry is more matured and it has greater sex­ual appeal than Javier’s and Katey’s. If Ferland had meant to place a greater empha­sis on the dance instead, then that would rea­son out the lack of chem­istry between the cou­ple. Nevertheless, Ardolino’s Dirty Dancing has always been view­ers’ num­ber one favourite.

And how could we not com­pli­ment the music used in the films?

Composed by Franke Previte, John DeNicola and Donald Markowitz, (I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life was the most hit song, ris­ing to #1 on the pop charts on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart in November 1987, three months after the first film was released in the US. This was the song Patrick and Jennifer starred in an amaz­ingly and beau­ti­fully chore­o­graphed Mambo num­ber by Kenny Ortega. The song was awarded an Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song as well as a Grammy Award for the best pop per­for­mance as a duet. Besides that, other records such as She’s Like the Wind, com­posed by Stacy Widelitz and Patrick Swayze him­self, and Hungry Eyes, com­posed by Franke Previte and John DeNicola, reached #3 and #4 on the pop charts respec­tively. These sound­tracks were well com­posed and per­formed and they suited the theme of the film. Be it the Mambo, the Fox Trot, the Cha Cha or even the dirty danc­ing, the back­ground music was well put in place and the dance and music com­pli­mented each other terrifically.

The music in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights has the Cuban touch to it and it was meant to be, of course, suit­ing the theme of the film as well. Songs such as Dance Like This, com­posed by Wyclef Jean, Jerry Duplessis, LaTavia Parker and Omar Alfanno, and Represent Cuba, com­posed by Livan Nuñez, Roldan Gonzalez, Nicolas Nocchi, Andres Levin, Joy Askew, Debbie Nova, N’Dea Davenport and Ismael Miranda makes the film more Cuban-based. The music used for the dance com­pe­ti­tion was Do You Only Wanna Dance sung by Mýa, who rocked the stage as Lola Martinez whilst the dancers rocked the dance floor. I’d say the music is more mod­ern for a set­ting in the 1950’s but nonethe­less, it was bril­liantly pro­duced to match the Cuban back­drop in the film. Apart from the fact that Shakira remade Dance Like This with the same pro­duc­ers Wyclef Jean and Jerry Duplessis, the music was not given much credit as com­pared to how much credit the music in the pre­vi­ous film was given. Despite this, the music sounded terrific.

With end­less shak­ing of the hips, whip­ping of the hair and the tap­ping of the feet, a dose of dirty danc­ing opens you up and makes you see life a dif­fer­ent way. It is sen­sa­tional. It is not sick. It is not dis­gust­ing. It is sim­ply danc­ing, danc­ing to love, be it Ardolino’s Dirty Dancing or Ferland’s.

Dirty Dancing (1987) Trailer

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004) Trailer