sharp suits and trilby hats – clear against the pale brightness. They stopped at the end of the garden, and looked towards us. Straight at us. We ourselves were picked out by the low glow of a night light inside, behind us. There was a pause. We held our breath. And then they started singing again, this time just for us, songs from the show: a medley.
This was it. It was happening. This was as close to backstage at Kellerman’s as I was going to get on England’s most westerly point. In fact, across the now near invisible horizon, lay Kellerman’s itself, just 3,000 miles away as the crow flies. It was enough. I was transfixed. I wondered if we should steal out of the house, trip down the path, and try to inveigle ourselves with these men, perhaps there would be a cast party somewhere, perhaps there would be dancing, perhaps there would be a call for me to step in on stage to cover a cast member who needed time off for a tricky personal medical procedure that had to be kept hush-hush, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps … But then the singing stopped, the men waved to us and moved on, their crisp outlines smudging into the night.
We had been, and there is simply no other word for it, serenaded. SERENADED, for god’s sake. For the rest of the holiday, I would lie on my inflatable mattress in our canvas tent, listening to the August rain and trying not to touch the sides, feeling all my feelings. It was the same feeling as I got when I watched Dirty Dancing – a tingle of magic, the sense of a million possibilities glittering before me.
The next obvious step in my obsession was to enrol in some actual dance classes. A short distance away from home, in the next town, there was a small dance school, which offered lessons in ballet, tap, modern, and something called ‘national’, which was basically learning the national dances of the various countries of the world – a singularly useless skill, but undeniably good exercise. I was naturally disappointed to find that the merengue, the salsa and the mambo were not on offer, but I made do. It was a start. After all, this was the Home Counties – Latin dance was really not a thing. But I did all of it, even the national dancing – all day Saturday, and Wednesday nights. And I loved it.
It may not come as a huge shock to learn that I was not deemed physically suitable for an internationally successful career as a prima ballerina, but I could definitely do modern or jazz dance pretty well, and tap too. I could feeeel the music. G-gong. G-gong. I could move to it naturally, instinctively. I felt that if I had to step in at any point to help a dancer in anguish, and thereby meet the love of my life, I would be OK. I would do Johnny proud, and we would then have excellent sex. I was prepared.
Our dance teacher wasn’t Penny by any stretch of the imagination, but she taught us the basics and was mostly encouraging in a terrifying kind of way. And she certainly made no secret of her opinions on our figures. On one occasion, she burst into the cramped changing room during our lunch break to find us all eating various bars of chocolate. Her face reddened in disgust, and she jabbed a finger at each of us in turn, punctuating her warning that, ‘They. Will. Make. You. Fat.’ A jab for each of us. I was munching a Bounty in a particularly bovine way at the time, and her unexpected accusation landed heavily. I suddenly felt ashamed and guilty. I finished the Bounty though. I wasn’t about to waste it.
Each year my dance school would host a local show called ‘the Choreographic’ and we pupils would have the opportunity to design our own routines and perform them for members of the public. There would be prizes and cups, and one horrifying event where we would have to spontaneously choreograph and perform a three-minute dance, onstage, to a piece of music we had never heard before. The risk of humiliation was high, and failure almost certain, and it was the only compulsory category. Whether it was meant to be enjoyable, or simply an expression of our dance teacher’s sadistic streak we will never know, but it scared the living shit out of everyone. Everyone except me. Because I was prepared.
By this point, dance improvisation was basically my hobby. At home, at the weekend, I would wait for everyone to leave the house, on errands or trips out, and beg to stay behind so I could play music as loudly as I was able on our HiFi stack and choreograph my own routines. I use the term ‘choreograph’ lightly – it was more a case of me just flinging myself about as wildly as I could, having cleared the furniture to make an acceptable dance space. It was absolute primeval abandon. A casual passing observer, catching the display through a window, might even be alarmed. But god, it felt good. It was total release, and I felt connected to Dirty Dancing through it. I felt I understood what made those characters tick. I felt part of their world. I was Dirty Dancing. And incredibly, that year, I won the Improvisation Cup at the Choreographic. This was mainly down to the fact that I had managed (by chance) to strike a pose right at the very moment the music stopped, which was accidental but impressive, since we had never heard it before. But it was also because of Dirty Dancing – it had made me bolder, braver. So, when the music started, I just danced, and I didn’t care about anything else.
The white heat of my besotted first encounter with the film began to fade when I was around 13. It had lasted two years – longer than some marriages – and I think made a foundation stone for the rest of my life. My obsessive tendencies were unexpectedly transferred around this age when I quite suddenly became a fundamentalist evangelical Christian, which lasted until I lost my faith at 19, after starting a theology degree.
I would like to say that I fell in love with Jesus, but if I’m honest, I fell in love with the worship band leader at my church. I managed to get myself into the band so I could moon at him from close quarters, though my love was firmly unrequited. Frankly, Jesus barely got a look in. I was ‘with the band’. Finally, I had made it backstage, where I liked to be, and still do. Dirty Dancing had given every backstage area a romantic flavour for me – the glamour, the secrets. And the band leader was a man of few words, a little gruff, but with his own damage and vulnerabilities. He was talented, but had seen a lot of trouble. His family life was tough. I think you know where I’m going with this …
Yes, Dirty Dancing has provided the template for my emotional life, my romantic life, my sex life and even my marriage. It inspired a love of dancing that has continued to this day: for better, for worse. It was like having a cool older sister, or a glamorous but slightly drunk auntie who will tell you a bit about life – about men and women, and the way we lock together, and then twirl apart. It showed me what it felt like to be a teenage girl, and how you become a woman. It goes beyond my experience, and has affected so many like me, and unlike me.
And of course, it gave us all something to say whenever we are stuck for words: ‘I carried a watermelon.’ So many people have now told me they’ve gasped ‘I carried a watermelon’ in an awkward moment just to ease the tension. Those four words have now entered the mainstream lexicon. It’s a phrase that has influenced our culture – you can buy (and I have) t-shirts, mugs, water bottles and more with it printed on. It’s even the title of a book … This is a huge achievement for any writer, so congratulations to Eleanor Bergstein – there aren’t many who can boast that four words conjured from their own imagination would become a phrase known and loved by so many people. But there’s so much more to say. Follow me …
Baby Houseman loses her virginity twice on screen, and the first time is through the medium of dance. The moment she wangles her way into the staff party with the infamous watermelon is where her sexual odyssey really kicks off. In the next 90 minutes or so, we discover that Dirty Dancing has an awful lot to say about sex, youth and freedom – much of which is extremely helpful to a young girl watching, with her eyes
