‘Dirty Dancing’ on stage at the Schuster

In addition to the mesmerizing dance sequences, the film is also credited with bringing to the screen a strong and idealistic female character fights for what she believes.

Bergstein is also the creative force behind the stage version of the show that’s traveled throughout the world and comes to the Benjamin & Marian Schuster Center March 14-19. Expect to hear the film’s hit songs — “Hungry Eyes,” “Hey! Baby,” “Do You Love Me?” and “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.”

The basic coming-of-age plot remains the same. It revolves around 17-year-old Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman on holiday with her parents and older sister at a resort in New York’s Catskill Mountains. When she discovers an all-night dance party at the staff quarters, Baby is fascinated by the raunchy dance moves and pounding rhythms and can’t wait to join in. Her summer changes dramatically when she meets and falls in love with the resort’s dance instructor, Johnny Castle, and becomes his leading lady both on-stage and off.

Parts of the plot are autobiographical. Bergstein, who grew up in Brooklyn, visited a Catskills resort with her parents when she was 12 and says she was a teenage Mambo queen. Some of the dance moves that ended up in film were familiar to her — “like my leg wrapped around my partner’s knee.”

“But I’m more Johnny than Baby,” she adds. “I worked my way through college as an Arthur Murray teacher.”

Bringing the story to the stage

Bergstein resisted the idea of a stage play for 20 years. “I’ve had terrific audiences for the film all over the world and I didn’t want to take advantage of them,” she explains. “Why should they pay for something they already had at home?”

But eventually she came to believe that people sat and watched the film over and over again — even if they owned the DVD —because “they wanted to be there when it was happening. They wanted to be more physically involved in the story. And that called for live theater.”

She’d grown up attending Broadway shows with her parents and knew she didn’t want simply to duplicate her film. “Who would want to just slap a movie onstage?” she says. So she added 22 new scenes, giving characters — like Baby’s parents — more depth. She also wanted to find a way to use the original music as a soundtrack but include an eight-piece band and live musicians as well.

“I know in most live theaters the main characters sing to each other, but don’t expect Baby to sing to Johhny and Johnny to sing to Baby,” she warns. “This play uses music the way you use it in real life. You’re more likely to see people singing along at a campfire, or watch a live Catskills band jamming — there were always live musicians at these resorts. “

The stage show also includes classic tracks ranging from “Cry To Me” by Rhythm & Blues singers Solomon Burke to Otis Redding’s first solo record, “These Arms of Mine.” Other artists featured are Gene Chandler, The Chantels, The Drifters, Marvin Gaye, Lesley Gore, Mickey & Sylvia, The Surfaris, Doris Troy and Django Reinhardt.

“Music is the soundtrack of the heart,” Bergstein says.”This is not a traditional musical. It’s music you pluck out of the world to hear. I think ‘Dirty Dancing’ was always meant to be a live stage show, and I was just too dumb to know it.”

Looking back

“I always say we should be introduced not by the things that went right in our life but the things that went wrong,” Bergstein says, explaining she fought battles on everything from casting and the mention of illegal abortion to the story, which was set in 1963 during the summer of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

“Everything you push back on because you care about it may work out at some point — or it may not — but you certainly won’t be happy if you don’t keep trying,” she believes. “We thought we’d be a laughing stock because everyone was mean to us and told us the movie was a piece of junk. Even the first screenings were horrible.”

Bergstein says many of the issues referenced in the plot — war, race relations, illegal abortion — have today come full circle and are still relevant. “I don’t take any pleasure in that,” she says. “Nothing about that makes me happy. It’s heartbreaking.”

A born storyteller

The film was indeed her “baby.” She was co-producer and involved with everything from final music editing to casting.

For the title role she had envisioned “a skinny little girl with lots of black curls, which is what I looked like. But when Jennifer Grey came in and danced to the Jackson 5, she was wonderful!”

Bernstein would like to correct the myth that a lot of other actors turned down the film. “It was always Patrick,” she says. “I told him later that I couldn’t have made the movie without him.”

The movie, with a budget under $5 million, was shot in North Carolina and Virginia.

“We wanted to show Baby walking from the main resort quarters (shot in Virginia) to the staff quarters (shot in North Carolina),” Bergstein explains. “So David ( the production designer) built a fence and had it trucked from one location to the other so we could see her walking along the path and the fences looked the same.”

A born storyteller

Bergstein says she has always tended to see life in terms of little stories.

“I came home from grade school and talked about everyone else’s life,” she remembers. “When I went to restaurants with my parents I would shush everyone so I could listen to the people at other tables.”

She’s been telling those stories ever since. She’s had a busy and varied career as novelist, screenwriter, producer, director. Her stories have been published in a wide variety of national magazines; her first movie script, “It’s My Turn,” starred Jill Clayburgh and Michael Douglas.

Bergstein, who runs a company called Magic House Productions, continues to write every day. She’s finished a new novel and says she wants to make a TV series out of her first novel — “Advancing Paul Newman” — about women and sex and politics in the 1960s. She says she’s hoping the new series will inspire people to get actively involved in political work again and “make it seem like the most interesting, exciting, sexually and morally alive way to live.” She is also working on a memoir, and hopes to shoot a film in Italy this year.

Meanwhile, her 30-year-old story continues to connect with audiences, no matter in what form it’s experienced.

“My guess is that everybody has a secret dancer inside them,” Bergstein says. “And I think there’s something about the story that encourages people of all ages — men, women, children — to possess their own lives.”

She says she chose to set “Dirty Dancing” during a summer when people felt they could turn the world around for what they felt was good.

“Baby was going into the Peace Corps, there was Martin Luther King, and everything seemed possible,” Bergstein says. “I wanted to go back to that and remind people of that.”

What would she like audiences to take away from her show? “The possibility that if your heart is pure, you can reach out your hand and change the world,” she says. “If you really want the world to be a good place, you can make it happen. That’s what happens with Baby and Johnny. They are people who stand up for people no matter what it costs them.”

HOW TO GO:

What: "Dirty Dancing — The Classic Story on Stage"

When: Tuesday, March 14 through Sunday, March 19. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 and 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. Saturday matinee performances of Broadway Series presentations are signed and/or audio interpreted. (You're asked to let the ticket agent know at least two weeks before the performance if you would like either of these services.)

Where: Schuster Center, 1 W. Second St., Dayton

Tickets: $30 and up plus service fees. Get tickets online at TicketCenterStage.com, at the Box Office, or by phone at (937) 228-3630 or 888-228-3630.

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