This is my dance space - your dance space

Rating: 10/10 (8 July 2011)

Dirty Dancing, a low budgeted movie, shot in 44 days and based on screenwriter 'Babes' own childhood in the Catskills. Baby: "That was the summer of 1963 - when everybody called me Baby, and it didn't occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came, when I couldn't wait to join the Peace Corps, and I thought I'd never find a guy as great as my dad. That was the summer we went to Kellerman's" (the Mountain Lake Hotel, Pembroke, Virginia). The last summer for this kind of resorts Max Kellerman thinks: "the young go to Europe, seeing 22 countries in three days". Regardless the not too good critics, the movie drew adult audiences instead of the expected teens, with viewers rating the film highly. Baby, seventeen and ready to cut the ties to Daddy, ready for Mount Holyoke College to study economics of underdeveloped countries and then the Peace Corps: "Our Baby's gonna change the world (and) Lisa's going to decorate it." The testing prelude are Kellerman's two worlds, divided by the sign Staff Quarters No Guests please. ... the guests world and the staff's. Baby passes the sign, warned by Johnny's cousin and Johnny asking: "What's she doing here? Taking time out from playing?" Is she worth it, can heart and soul really belong to the staff, the people, herself belonging to the (rich) guests? She helps Penny not only with the father money for the backstreet abortion, later calling for daddy when it went bad, not only a stand-in at the Sheldrake, before this the hard-work-rehearsal with the hostile Johnny. Not bothering Penny's: " Go back to your playpen, Baby" and Robbie Goulds "some people count, some people don't". The Kellerman's grandson tells Baby, seeing her sister with Robbie: "Sometimes in this world you see things you do not want to see." A minute later she sees the weeping Penny, something that is not meant for her eyes: and acts accordingly, worth her future at the Peace Corps. Not to recognize but see beyond Kellerman's peaceful playpen. Baby, named after Frances Perkins, the first woman in the U.S. Cabinet, knows what she wants. And Johnny Castle, the working class guy, both falling in love with each other. When he is accused for theft Baby frees him, admitting that she spent the night with him: followed by the father-daughter-confrontation. Johnny gets his summer bonus but has to leave by the back door. For the first time Johnny Castle experiences a persons courage. But Baby denies, pointing to the fact that she is nothing else but afraid of everything. Returning through the front door he pulls Frances out of the corner and up on stage: "Sorry for the interruption, folks, but I always do the last dance of the season. This year somebody told me not to. So I'm gonna do my kind of dancing' with a great partner, who's not only a terrific dancer, but somebody... who's taught me... that there are people willing to stand up for other people no matter what it costs them. Somebody who's taught me about the kind of person I wanna be. Miss Frances Houseman." Then the dance – and: the lift. In the back the staff, the people. Suddenly everybody joins the whirl of Johnny's and Baby's dirty dancing, based on the rule: "This is my dance space – your dance space. Keep our places and grip." Dirty Dancings core is, as the director sees it: "I think that Dirty Dancing is the most intimate communication outside the bedroom. It is not dirty at all. Two people looking at each other, looking into each others eyes and try to say: 'I love you.' Its beautiful." This is my dance space – your dance space. The process from recognition to see each other: admitting in front of the audience love, able the lifts climax. Able and ready for the Peace Corpse. Beyond politics, religion: just the people, their needs. Inspired by JFK:s speech at 2:00 a.m. on October 14, 1960 addressed students on the steps of the University of Michigan Union. Possible. Summer 1963, 22 November the shot in Texas, Dallas.