Dirty Dancing Tickets

In 2007, the wildly successful musical Dirty Dancing sashayed its way to Toronto's popular stage and the buzz shows no sign of quieting. The play is based on the 1987 smashing big screen flick with the same name. At the time, it emerged as a low budget film that became a blockbuster - earning over $300 million worldwide and with a soundtrack that merited two multi-platinum albums. One song (I've Had) The Time of My Life won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song and a Grammy for the Best Duet.

Written by Eleanor Bergstein, Dirty Dancing is a love story set in 1963 between an upper-class, college bound vacationer and a working class member of the resort staff. Seventeen years old Jane Baby Houseman - the girl with two left feet -falls in love with Johnny, a professional dancer from the wrong side of the tracks. Naturally, the course of true love fails to run smoothly when Dr. Houseman, Baby's dad thinks the young man is unfit for his daughter - mistakenly believing he has fathered a child with his dance partner Penny Johnson. The play's scenery moves with the cast, creating fluidity in the performance. Pieces of the stage rise up and revolve to whisk the characters from one setting to another. The video backdrops of sweeping forests, torrential rainstorms, winding mountain highways and even a lake are all spectacular. Even the sky changes from a mellow blue in the morning to the sharp pinks of sunset. Kudos to set designer Stephen Brimson Lewis! The theater's surround sound system completes the effect as crickets gently hum in the background during nightfall. Kate Champion's choreography is a display of raw athleticism, supple grace and balletic elegance.

Combined with the 39 actors, Baby's 21 costume changes and live singing, the performance truly does transport audiences to a different world. On stage, you have real bodies making real leaps. Every night, a very real Jane Baby Houseman turns from a non-dancer into a dancer. The show features a blend of over 50 pop songs from the early 1960's and the live orchestra is played for the ballroom numbers and several R & B tunes in act two. Additionally, there are modern dances sensually expressed with a nice blend of ballroom, mambo, tango and waltzes to an assortment of pop tunes. At many points in the play, the audience, especially the fans of the movie, would find it hard to stifle excitement as they will get caught up in the nostalgia of 1960s simplicity and hit songs such as Hungry Eyes and (I've Had) The Time of My Life. Despite some nods to social and political significance such as the Peace Corps, John F. Kennedy, and abortion, Dirty dancing is a vivid picture of resort life set to the foot tapping, syncopated rhythms of dance making it an utterly irresistible show. The musical is a hit as it successfully brings a familiar narrative more fully to life!