The best Johnny is a woman. Brett Beer parodies Patrick Swayze as the dance teacher in the film "Dirty Dancing" so well at the costume competition that she receives the loudest applause from the audience during the voting. The 39-year-old in the rebellious black Johnny outfit particularly impresses with an Elvis-like full-body twitch.
"We had unbelievable fun," Beer tells us the next morning at breakfast. Her three friends Amber Musenbrock, Jamie Dumstorff and Julie Brown are sitting next to her. The four women have known each other since high school. All grew up in and around Germantown, Illinois, but now live in different places.
Julie Brown (from left), Amber Musenbrock, Brett Beer and Jamie Dumstorff, here in front of Baby's cabin, have been "Dirty Dancing" fans since childhood.
© Source: Mathias Begalke
A visit to the film set is a journey into the past
Once a year they get together for a Girls Weekend, as they call it. The mood, you can imagine, was pretty boisterous on the first evening of their reunion with pizza and bottled beer. They're in a school-age reminiscing frenzy here, on the set of "Dirty Dancing".
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Six times a year, Heidi Stone, General Manager of Mountain Lake Lodge, invites guests to a Dirty Dancing Weekend. Then her holiday resort in the southern Appalachians of Virginia transforms into Kellerman's Mountain House, as the resort was called in the film.
Linda (left) and Amanda Dubbs with the famous melons in front of the main house of Mountain Lake Lodge, which as Kellerman's Mountain House is a popular destination for "Dirty Dancing" fans several times a year.
© Source: Mathias Begalke
Lake had dried up
Ten years ago, when Stone started here, the business was on the verge of going out of business. "Everything had fallen into disrepair," she says. No one was investing ideas and money in the building and grounds any more, which was probably also due to the fact that the lake in which Baby and Johnny practised The Lift, the famous lifting figure from the final scene, had dried up. Eventually, the owners did realise what a treasure they had in the midst of lush, partially untouched nature. The Appalachians here are called the Blue Ridge Mountains. They really do shimmer pale blue.
This used to be the lake where Baby and Johnny practised the lifting figure in the water in the film. A sign commemorates the famous scene.
© Source: Mathias Begalke
Selfie in front of Baby's Cabin
The most popular selfie background is Baby's Cabin, the cabin where Frances "Baby" Houseman, played by Jennifer Grey, lived with her family in the film. Next spring, Grey returns to the site of her biggest box-office success to shoot the sequel to the cult film. The executive couldn't ask for better publicity. It is already known that the dance film is set in the nineties. Grey, who is now 62, said in an interview that she wants to take away people's fear of getting older by showing "that certain things are not just reserved for young people".
Brie Johanson has seen "Dirty Dancing" 500 times. The 45-year-old from Aldie, Virginia, has travelled with her husband Richard, whom the hit film reminds of "a time of transition", of the end of school days and youthful light-heartedness, of the search for one's own voice and one's own path, just as 17-year-old Baby experiences in the film. Perhaps in part two, the viewer will learn whether she actually joined the Peace Corps as she intended; what has become of the young woman's ideals 35 years later.
Brie and Richard Johanson travelled from Aldie in Virginia for the "Dirty Dancing" weekend. She says she has seen the film 500 times.
© Source: Mathias Begalke
"Dirty Dancing" is set in the summer of 1963, in the breathing space between the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy assassination. Soon the USA will enter the Vietnam War. Baby's story is partly autobiographical. Screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein also spent the summers of her childhood and adolescence with her parents in a holiday settlement located in the Catskill Mountains north of New York. There, in the so-called Borscht Belt, there were hundreds of these resorts where mainly Jewish Americans went on holiday. There, too, they danced mambo and not uptight foxtrot.
Group dancing to the mambo rhythm
At Mountain Lake Lodge they serve a cocktail called Mambo Magic, but learning to dance like Baby and Johnny would probably take weeks. We only have today. The dance instructors Debbi Richey and Dennis Williams are trying hard. They show us a seemingly simple group dance in mambo rhythm. There are only two instructions: "Quick quick slow" and "Don't forget to smile". To manage both at the same time - quite complicated. In the end, there is a lot of laughter.
The matter of the lake, this curiosity, preoccupies many of the 300 guests. Why the water seeps away from time to time can only be guessed. "A geological peculiarity," explains manager Stone. The last time Mountain Lake was one-third full was in 2020. Currently, the white jetty ends in dusty steppe again. Scrub is spreading. It's hard to imagine that the lake is normally about five metres deep.
A few couples nevertheless try to recreate The Lift for a photo. Even without the lake. Most of them fail at the acrobatically demanding exercise. Even the well-trained Swayze couldn't do it without help during the filming. Someone supported him under water.
Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze during the famous film scene in the lake.
© Source: IMAGO/Cinema Publishers Collection
Julie-Anne Dupont celebrates her 40th birthday at Mountain Lake. Along with her husband Adam Turbin, she won the movie quiz. "If the movie is on TV, we'll watch it," say the Ottawa couple. For them, "Dirty Dancing" seems to be a kind of top sprinkling with depth.
The story is still relevant
On the surface, it tells the story of a first love. On the surface, it's about overcoming social divides when the well-bred doctor's daughter Baby, against all odds, falls in love with bad boy Johnny. The fact that her father treats Johnny's dance partner Penny, who is writhing in pain after an illegal abortion, even catapults the plot into the now. Julie-Anne finds it "frightening" that the topic of abortion is as controversial in the USA today as it was back then.
Shop for shirts with quotes
In the shop there are T-shirts with the two most famous "Dirty Dancing" quotes. "Nobody puts Baby in a corner", which was very loosely translated as "My baby belongs to me" for the German version. The "I carried a watermelon" shirt is also a popular purchase. The scene in which Baby climbs a staircase with a watermelon in her arms before dancing with Johnny for the first time was not shot at Mountain Lake, but at Lake Lure in North Carolina, the second location of the film.
Eating at the Housemans' table
Everyone can probably be photographed with melons, including Linda and Amanda Dubbs, mother and daughter from Hanover, Pennsylvania. Generations can agree on this film. That is another reason why it is cult. The two stand in front of the main house, which was built of sandstone in 1936. Nothing has been changed on the façade since then. Even the restaurant furnishings are original "Dirty Dancing". If you want, you can sit at the same table as the Housemans at dinner. A look into the kitchen, where the unintentionally pregnant Penny hid in desperation, is not allowed, but chef Michael Porterfield is happy to be questioned.
Original "Dirty Dancing": The table where the Housemans sat in the restaurant.
© Source: Mathias Begalke
The 65-year-old was already working here at the time of filming. "Patrick Swayze wasn't really a star back then," he recalls. "He drank beer with us, and once I took him to Blacksburg on my motorbike." Because Swayze sat on the pillion one time, some fans over the years wanted to buy Porterfield's bike.
What's the name of the most played song on our retro trip? Right. "(I've Had) the Time of My Life". Unsurprisingly, it's also the last song the DJ plays at the party on Saturday night. And afterwards, there's a bottled beer outside Baby's Cabin.
Tips for your trip to Virginia
Getting there: There are daily flights from various German airports to Washington Dulles International Airport. From there it's on to Roanoke in Virginia. A rental car is recommended from the airport to Mountain Lake Lodge. Travel time: about 70 minutes.
Entry: Germans must apply online for an Esta entry permit at least 72 hours before arrival. Cost: 21 US dollars.
Mountain Lake Lodge: The resort is open all year round. Baby's Cabin and Room 232 in the main lodge, where Patrick Swayze stayed during filming, can be booked at no extra charge. Dirty Dancing Weekends take place between April and October. Price per person for two nights in a double room: from 799 US dollars, about 825 euros. This includes full board (excluding alcoholic beverages), film screening, dance class, quiz and lawn games. Next dates: 28-30 April 2023, 23-25 June 2023.
The trip was supported by Capital Region USA. The editorial team alone decides on the selection and direction of the content.
