Name: Choreographers Break Down the Final Dance Scene from Dirty Dancing | Vanity Fair
Uploaded: 2020-03-26T02:20:37.000Z
Duration: 10 min 59 s
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I'm Lauren Grant, and I'm Christopher Grant, and we're professional dancers and choreographers.

And today we're gonna break down the time of my life Dance in dirty dancing.

Dirty Dancing, which was released in 1987 takes place in 1963 at the Kellerman's Resort in the Catskills.

It was written by Eleanor Bergstein, choreographed by The Amazing in Europe, with assistance from Miranda Garrison.

When they went into making this film and even while shooting, no one really thought it was gonna be anything.

Jennifer Grey says it herself that she thought no one would see the film.

She even saw screening of it with her agent, and her agent was like, Oh, this is bad fast for it.

It's like does incredibly well at the box office.

There were even a group of women called the 100 Plus Club that saw the movie in theaters over 100 times.

Eleanor Bergstein wrote the story of Dirty Dancing, and it was really based off of her childhood.

She grew up going to the Catskills to these resorts.

She even based the Johnny Castle character off of a teacher that she met at one of the Catskill Resorts.

So it was really near and dear to her heart.

We're gonna break down the introduction of the finale.

Brings her up classic dirty dancing Move.

Have basic step turn step away, shoulder chick than basic No one like this before.

And you Hey, you know that part of the film you remember that director of Dirty Dancing was a mill, Our daily?

The choreographer of the film is Kenny Ortega.

He has some Latin roots, but one of you would take his idols was Gene Kelly.

We had a great opportunity to work with in the movie Xanadu.

Kelly would invite him back to his home, and they would literally dissect some of Kelly's films and discussed why he choreographed and how he choreographed for camera, discovered Kenny Ortega and auditioned him and loved his work.

And then a meal was like, Okay, Eleanor, like you have to meet him.

They flew Kenny Ortega to New York to Eleanor Burke scenes apartment and ended up dirty dancing in her apartment for hours.

And apparently it got like, super sexy and hot.

And it reminded Eleanor Bergstein of her childhood and that feeling.

It was like a feeling rather than the steps when he comes in to convince Patrick Swayze e that to do the film.

But Patrick, I want to make sure that he felt safe with Kenny Ortega was kind of done dancing.

He want to pursue more serious acting roles in He didn't want to be completely known as a dancer because he felt that that would be stunting to him moving forward as an actor and he would always be casting all those roles.

And then he ends up doing dirty dancing, which got this incredible hit, and he was able to do sort of both things.

He did what Gene Kelly did in his time, where it was okay for a man to dance, and you can look super masculine and strong and finger for Kenya.

Rudiger for convincing him to do this film because we wouldn't have this wonderful piece of art.

She was not necessarily a dancer, but she's a mover, you know.

And I think she's an actress first, and she went into it.

Knowing that she was gonna have to carry the film is Baby.

She found the character first, and that's what we fell in love with.

They purposely didn't teach her stuff and on Lee taught it to her when they were actually shooting to keep that real nous alive and to really witnessed something truly happening versus an actor pretending she doesn't know how to dance and then discovering how to dance.

For instance, even just the opening into the South quarters, where she first sees dirty dancing, they purposely capture out of that rehearsal space so that when they shot, that was really her.

Let's break down the second section what we'll call the turning section.

So Johnny's holding the hands baby's fingers, thumbs were pointing in.

Johnny turns half basic cross body lead shoulder check.

It's hard to do slow into a basic with a side body lean into a basic set cross body lead.

So so this film is set in 1963 and in the early sixties in America, it was definitely a little bit of, ah, time of innocents in regarding Dance.

There was like partner dancing, but not a lot of touching and certainly and not not a lot of like hip thrusting and hip movement and the silo dance at this finale, seen Kenny Ortega calls it Dirty Mambo.

It's combining mambo, and it's combining street style dances that he did as a kid that he remembers some dancing that Eleanor Bergstein remembers as a child.

The beginning of the dance when we see the basic step is mambo also salsa?

Yeah, there's many different techniques, and everyone has their own kind of salsa on one salsa on to Mama 11 mambo on to, uh, but it's a blend.

So now we're gonna break down the section that we call the care So section.

So it's going to start with 1/2 a basic prep for lift around, really supporting the lady we come down.

We do a turn to set up for half a basic cross body lead with a turn.

Wow, that was not again Ugo Dance Move right there.

Time of My Life was recorded by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, and it was composed by Frank Prevent.

It's such a classic song, I think you hear this song and you think of the dance, and when you see the dance, you think of the song, so it's really like so seemed together.

So the song Time of My Life is basically tease throughout the entire movie in a plate simply by a piano, and we hear it in different scenes as Baby makes her journey until the very end.

We have it in the final scene there, the whole lyrics, the whole orchestration.

Let's break down the big finale epic Angel lift she's carried down off the stage, and then she runs into Johnny.

She does a little awesome blade jump, and then she just thinks about jumping as high as she can.

Her right leg is on the bottom left like it's on the top and she just hold it.

So the important part for Johnny, he separates his legs to give him a little support underneath baby runs in some play, finds her hip bones to balance her perfectly and then press up through his strong space and then extend the arms right overhead, keeping the core tight and holding up baby in the Angel lifted and slowly bringing her down to cap off the wonderful moment.

The Triumph of Baby, the just that big overhead press.

You go on YouTube, you see about one million videos of people's weddings, and I'm trying to do this.

Left doing the lift, the NFL commercial with Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr.

It's like do the lift The lift is also in crazy stupid love with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.