Patrick Swayze’s dance instructor Johnny swept me off my feet when I was an awkward teenager. Would I still have the time of my life rewatching this feelgood classic?Read all the other My favourite film choicesThe best arts and entertainment during self-isolationGrowing up, there weren’t many films that I had watched so many times that I knew not just the lines but also the songs off by heart, but Dirty Dancing was one of them. I was way too young to see it at the cinema when it first came out in 1987, but caught it a few years later on TV, recording it on to a VHS tape so I could replay my favourite scenes. I was thrilled. I was a bookish kid who felt intensely shy and awkward. And there on my screen was a not-that-shy but definitely studious and awkward teenager being swept off her feet, literally, by Patrick Swayze.
That’s pretty much where any similarities with Frances “Baby” Houseman, played by Jennifer Grey, end. I wasn’t from a well-off family, didn’t go on fancy holidays and couldn’t dance to save my life. But living in a drab town in the deepest suburbs of Surrey, I did know what it was like to be bored with your perfectly fine but humdrum life and hanker for something more exciting, however briefly. Although I was only 12 so my options were limited. Dance was Baby’s escape, mine was the film. And the story of her holiday romance with dance instructor Johnny Castle (Swayze) transported me to a world of 1960s nostalgia and great
music.