More Than A Feeling

‘Dirty Dancing’ everything fans want

March 3, 2017 at 1:00 a.m.

by Jocelyn Murphy

Twenty years after “Dirty Dancing” became a cultural phenomenon, creator Eleanor Bergstein wanted to give her audience what they didn’t know they’d been missing. She brought the story to the stage with a musical — but don’t expect a lot of singing from Baby and Johnny. “It really couldn’t be a traditional musical because no one wants to hear Baby singing ‘Be My Baby’ to Johnny — I mean they would throw soiled handkerchiefs at the stage! So I had to find a new form,” Bergstein says of her nontraditional “musical.” “It is a play with music — 90 percent of the music is live. It’s the way you use music in your real life. … It is kids making music in the summer the way we all do. I think music is the soundtrack of the heart, so you can always remember what happened to you while you were listening to that song, and that’s the way I wanted to use music here.”
Twenty years after “Dirty Dancing” became a cultural phenomenon, creator Eleanor Bergstein wanted to give her audience what they didn’t know they’d been missing. She brought the story to the stage with a musical — but don’t expect a lot of singing from Baby and Johnny. “It really couldn’t be a traditional musical because no one wants to hear Baby singing ‘Be My Baby’ to Johnny — I mean they would throw soiled handkerchiefs at the stage! So I had to find a new form,” Bergstein says of her nontraditional “musical.” “It is a play with music — 90 percent of the music is live. It’s the way you use music in your real life. … It is kids making music in the summer the way we all do. I think music is the soundtrack of the heart, so you can always remember what happened to you while you were listening to that song, and that’s the way I wanted to use music here.”

Eleanor Bergstein doesn't care why you like "Dirty Dancing" -- whether for the love story, the pretty costumes or the overarching themes -- she's just excited if you like it at all. But in recent history, the creator of the iconic film has noticed more and more people are drawn to the issues presented in the story -- and their continued relevance today.

"I thought, 'It's there, and I know it's there,'" Bergstein says of the political and social motifs laid throughout the film, which was expected to be a box office flop.

FAQ

‘Dirty Dancing:

The Classic Story on Stage’

WHEN — 7 p.m. Wednesday; 1:30 & 7 p.m. Thursday; 8 p.m. March 10; 2 & 8 p.m. March 11; 2 p.m. March 12

WHERE — Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville

COST — $48-$97

INFO — 443-5600 or waltonartscenter.org

BONUS — Eleanor Bergstein, spunky creator of both the film and stage versions of “Dirty Dancing,” had a lot to say on 30 years of history with her iconic story. To read more of her thoughts, visit nwaonline.com/whats… for exclusive content.

Despite their importance to Bergstein, it's possible viewers may not fully grasp the significance of the social issues presented in the context of the film, and their continued prominence today. Or perhaps those parts of the story have become a little blurry if it's been a few years since one's last viewing. But contemporary audiences might be surprised at how familiar the issues are in a 30-year-old film set in 1963. In the stage version of the classic story -- opening at the Walton Arts Center on Wednesday -- Bergstein has the time to dig a little deeper into the themes she felt were so important to include 30 years ago.

"We of course had our illegal abortion [in the film] when 'Roe v. Wade' was safe, which it isn't now. And I had things about Vietnam, and now young men are being sent across the world to fight in a war they don't want to fight in," Bergstein says. "And of course race relations: I set [the film] in the summer of '63 when Martin Luther King Jr. made his 'I Have a Dream' speech, and now we go from town to town where there are Black Lives Matter [happenings]. So there are so many things that have, to my sorrow, become topical again."

Bergstein wants to be clear: She doesn't need or expect audiences to approach the story with any moral or political conceits. For those enamored with Baby and Johnny, the dances, the costumes, the music -- there's more of that in the stage version, too. When Bergstein was in the throes of production on a film everyone told her was going to fail, the project had little time and little money, so she was forced to make some cuts. Some 20 years later, after realizing how many people watched the movie again and again, Bergstein felt her story had a natural next step. Luckily this time, money and time were no issue.

"What I really thought is that [the audience] had been wanting it all along without knowing they'd been wanting it," she says. "They wanted to be there while it was happening, and they kept leaning forward and hitting against the flat screen. And if that was the case, then its natural form was live theater.

"So [the show is] characters who are your size -- not bigger than you as in a movie theater, or smaller on a VCR or the TV," she continues. "And it's happening in real time, right in front of you -- this moment in time. You walk in and pretty fast, you realize this is what you've been wanting and you couldn't get from the movie, if we do it right. And the most moving thing for me is, if I'm in the theater, all over the world now, people come up to me and say the same thing: 'I'm so relieved.' Which is to say, 'I'm relieved that I don't feel foolish for coming to see this when I have it at home. I'm relieved it didn't make me not love something that I did love.'"

NAN What's Up on 03/03/2017

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