Dirty Dancing

Director: Emile Ardolino

1987 / 100min / 35mm

A pulse-pounding pop fantasy starring Jennifer Grey as headstrong 17-year-old doctor’s daughter “Baby” Houseman who, while on vacation in the Catskills in the summer of ’63, finds herself falling head-over-heels for sexy working-class dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze, at his most pinup perfect, and most vulnerable), as she begins to fill in for his pregnant stage partner in the lead-up to a crucial competition. “[A] bright dance musical… about the role that dancing had in the embryonic counterculture… Choreographer Kenny Ortega uses the dancing to bring out the sensual dreaminess of the songs… You come out of the theater giggling happily.” —Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

Part of Lazy, Hazy, Swayze Days