It was the summer of 1994. At almost fourteen years old, I wasn’t quite a child and not yet a full-fledged teen. I wanted to play with my little cousins, but I was usually in charge. I didn’t know yet that despite all my secret crushes I would never find a guy as a great as my dad. It was the last true summer of the freedom of childhood.
It was the summer of the lift.
The climactic dance move from the classic eighties film Dirty Dancing that my cousins and I practiced to no end in the lake.
That iconic childhood memory brought my sister and I endless hours of fun back home at the lake and drove us to purchase tickets to see Dirty Dancing at Ordway Theater in
St. Paul, Minnesota. As it was near my birthday, we brought Mom and Dad – fans of the musical soundtrack of the fifties and sixties.
We were all looking forward to seeing how this show could be reimagined for the stage. The script was almost word for word from the movie. (I went home and rewatched it that night to compare). The pit orchestra was able to recreate the iconic music they didn’t borrow from the originals, and a couple of the swing cast had simply amazing voices. They were truly not noted enough in the cast. Erick Pinnick was the crooner Tito Suarez and truly embodied those Latin American dances.
Olivia Cece, as Penny, and Blake Zelesnikar as Johnny were precise on every dance move. They were most definitely dancers as their characters fell terribly flat. Zelesnikar felt like he was reading from a script many times.
Annalese Starzec was a dead ringer for Jennifer Grey and was the strongest of the main characters in both dance and acting ability. Her transformation from a rookie dancer to almost elite was nuanced and in depth.
The staging was creative with many set pieces moving in and out by swing characters to show the different locations around Camp Kellerman. The iconic lift moment practiced over water was cleverly done behind a shadowed scrim with water depicted behind. The characterization of emerging from water by both Starzec and Zelesnikar was masterfully done to give off the playful vibe of the scene emblazoned in the minds of Millennial and Gen Zers everywhere.
The show’s pace kept clipping and there were few moments that dragged down the plot progression, although my mom didn’t remember quite so much sex between Baby and Johnny. Truly, the number of times the bed had to be rolled on would be high on my list of scenes that could be cut from the show.
The bottom line is, if you love the movie, dance, and the music of the fifties and sixties the show is a fun, and even if you do not have the time of your life your spirits will at least get a “lift.”