Thanks to the disappearing lake, we could walk to the very spot where Johnny lifted Baby, marked by a metal-ringed anchor and a set of cinder blocks that held the floating platform Swayze and Grey stood on between takes. That was Bartender Mike’s standard greeting throughout the weekend, including at the beginning of his movie location tour Saturday morning. “Are y’all having the time of your lives?” “I actually went into the hotel room afterwards and just cried. “At last night’s party, we got to dirty dance a little without being judged and looked at,” Lori said the next day. It all culminated with a conga-line dance through the aisles during the final sequence. Fans whooped at favorite lines, like “I carried a watermelon” the decibel level during the love scene was overwhelming. I already have reservations for next year.”Īfter unleashing 30 years of pent-up dirty dancing-let’s just say the cocktail-fueled “Love Is Strange” floor-crawling re-creations were plentiful-the crowd headed to the basement to watch the film that started it all. It was hard coming back in June, but I’m gonna keep on. “My husband and I always came here together,” Peggy said. She’s attended the Lodge’s Dirty Dancing weekends every summer since 2012, and arrived this year with her daughter Tara and 9-year-old granddaughter Anna. Peggy, from Emporia, Virginia, immediately loved the film when she first saw it in the theater. Check-in was beneath a flat-screen TV boasting a “Welcome to Kellerman’s” graphic, where a lanyard-strung laminated weekend itinerary and maps to the cabins came with the news that the evening’s costume contest and gazebo dance had been moved to the barn due to inclement weather. Guests arrived for the third Dirty Dancing weekend of the summer, the last weekend of July, in lashing rain-perfect weather for donning a “Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner” sweatshirt. The only thing that’s missing is the lake itself: thanks to both its location on a fault line and seismic activity, it slowly started draining in 1998 and was dry within 10 years. Most of the Lake Lure locales are now gone, but some major ones-the gazebo, the main sand stone-front hotel and dining room, the front lawn, the kitchen, the Houseman family cabin-can still be found at Mountain Lake. (The ballroom where we see Baby and Johnny’s final dance, complete with Baby’s corner, was actually a converted gym located in North Carolina, which has since been demolished). But the movie itself was shot at the Lodge, in Pembroke, Virginia, and various areas of Lake Lure, North Carolina. In the film, Kellerman’s Mountain House is located in upstate New York. Now people flock each summer to see the lake where Johnny and Baby practiced their lift-and the Mountain Lake Lodge is all too happy to welcome their devotees. Who could’ve imagined this would be the legacy of a movie whose initial test screenings were so bleak that it almost went straight to video? After producers took a gamble with a theatrical release, Dirty Dancing became one of the highest-grossing movies of 1987, producing a Grammy-winning original song and overnight stars in Patrick Swayze (as sultry Johnny Castle) and Jennifer Grey (as idealistic Baby Houseman). (Much of the movie was filmed at the Lodge, an able stand-in for the script’s fictional Catskills resort.) On any given year, the Lodge welcomes over 1,000 fans for these events this year, which marks the film’s 30th anniversary, they added another weekend due to increased demand. The Lodge goes through roughly 100 watermelons during its peak summer months, when it hosts guests from all points of the globe for a series of Dirty Dancing-themed getaways. Perhaps it was a surprise there weren’t more. On a cloudless Sunday in late July, there was a smashed watermelon strewn across the otherwise pristine front lawn of the Mountain Lake Lodge.
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