Well, the movie has some great dancing but could have a little more

Rating: 8/10 (3 October 2006)

The part I liked the most was the scene where Jennifer Grey (acting as Frances Houseman) had to be a dance partner in a mambo dance exhibition with Patrick Swayze (acting as Johnny Castle)...in a matter of several days.
Of course, Jennifer realized that this mambo dance exhibition mandated a lot of practice on her part.
The first mambo rehearsal scene I liked was especially when they had to do an opening part on the mambo called the Right Intimate Shadow Pose to Very Slow Masseuse to Rolling Off The Arm to Right Open Side-By-Side Position, to the song "Hungry Eyes." This was perhaps the most boring part of the flick because there are several rewinds of that sequence showing how these dance partners had to get that opening dance sequence absolutely perfect!
I also liked another mambo dance rehearsal scene--the ending sequence to the mambo, which included a lady's rocket lift, a lady's Derby throw (aerial step) into an X-line oversway (picture line), and a finishing men's and lady's layback lunge in open promenade. The final dance move was too grueling for Jennifer until Patrick showed her how to properly do the aerial steps--outside the dance floor. So with the help of Patrick, Jennifer was in the air on an open field, and then, the water.
Regrettably, Patrick should have told Jennifer that he was an Arthur-Murray-certified instructor earlier in the flick....but the mistake was that he did so in the middle part of practicing their mambo routine.
Yet even so, when Jennifer's and Patrick's "Mambo Magic" exhibition occurred to the old-time Mambo hit, "De Todo Un Poco", I had realized why I love dance movies so much. When Patrick and Jennifer danced this Latin exhibition, I saw a new inspiration for me to take up ballroom dancing again--although I had read a very old Fred Astaire dance book at that time. In addition, Jennifer was able to fake what would have been major mistakes in the mambo routine---turning, for instance, a botched lady's star lift into a sort of rooting cheer with bent arms along with leg pumps.
Another scene in the flick was slightly less interesting but still intriguing, when one of the employees said to Patrick that because dance trends were changing in the Catskills area, he should dance the pachanga instead of the mambo. I knew at that point that this dance will be different from before.......
After I saw that final dance exhibition in the flick, the pachanga they did was different---an eclectic mix of a little twist of lambada, theatrical arts dance, and a taste of the mambo dance they did earlier in the movie. I didn't know what pachanga came from at first, but I realized that one version of the pachanga took place in the heart of Colombia. It was a type of salsa dance which had the famous foot crossings and swivels that you can also see in the modern mambo in American Rhythm dancing. The Spanish word "pachanga" means "party", and it referred also to the resurgence of salsa dance parties in the U.S. during the 1990s, when salsa had its rebirth with the salsa hit "Cali Pachanguero" (by the group "Grupo Niche"), in another dance movie I liked---"Salsa: The Motion Picture."
With the pachanga dance in "Dirty Dancing", I also correlate that dancing as much less racy than "The Forbidden Dance: Lambada", which was released in 1990.