Dignity of the Dancer

In 1987, a low budget film entitled Dirty Dancing took to movie theaters and created a small revolution. Since its release, Dirty Dancing has become a cult phenomenon, seen countless times on cable and released for personal ownership on DVD and the long forgotten VHS. The movie, a cheeky, somewhat corny tale about a couple of kids from different sides of the track who fall in love through seductive dance, caught parents off guard and their teenagers by surprise. The setting was an upscale country club in Upstate New York in the 1960s. Soon after its release, people were quoting lines from the silly film and finding ways to engage in some of the hip gyrating dances they’d witnessed on the screen.

I was 17 years old when it came out, but it would be several years – when I went to college - before I would feel the full effect of it and be able to, not only enjoy the film without hiding from my parents, but also understand its critics and passionate defenders alike. Dirty Dancing wasn’t pornography, it garnered a PG-13 rating for goodness’s sake, but by definition, pornography is material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction. If you go by that definition, then this film could definitely be categorized, in some ways, as pornographic. In me, as in many of my girlfriends, Dirty Dancing tickled and stirred the already heightened hormones that were coursing through us causing us to sniff out men and boys that we would otherwise not have been sniffing. Basically, this little flick could make anyone a hornball.

At its core, Dirty Dancing is about a girl who was ready to grow up, but didn’t know how to get out from the child’s image she was living under. Her mother was kind of a bubble headed flake, her sister was unpleasant to the eye (and ears if you heard her sing!), and her father, a doctor (played by the late, great Jerry Orbach), was hell bent on making of his "Baby" some sort of virginal, learned world leader. Although she thought she was content, she soon discovered that she lacked someone in her life. She needed to do something radical to prove who she was as a person and hooking up with the ‘help’ at her parents’ Catskills Country Club-type camp in the 1960s seemed like just the ticket.

Enter Johnny Castle (played beautifully mesmerizing by Patrick Swayze). He was one of the snotty camp’s hired professional dancers. What blossoming teenage girl could resist the likes of him? He was beautiful!! Certainly not Frances “Baby” Houseman (played by Jennifer Grey). She set her eyes on him the minute she saw him dancing with his glamorous partner, Penny Johnson (Cynthia Rhodes). You can tell by the look in her eyes that her attraction was purely animalistic! Soon, circumstances of the side players set the innocent conquest of Johnny by Baby in motion. He needed a dance partner suddenly, and she was there to fill the dance shoes, though embarrassingly rigid at first.

I personally believe that it is Swayze’s presence in the film that have helped make it the enduring and beloved movie it continues to be today. His mission was to make you believe that anyone can be taught to dance. If you happened to fall in love in the process, oh well, you’re just lucky, I guess. In the film and in real life, his charm, stunning dancer’s physique and charisma made him the epitome of the hot Hollywood leading man. In the film, those same attributes gave audiences something to watch with eyes wide open. And although Dirty Dancing premiered 22 years ago, seeing him at his top physical best every time I watch the movie makes it seem like it only just happened yesterday.

But many yesterdays have come and gone since that time and Patrick Swayze is on an entirely different mission today. Diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer a year ago, the once riveting dancer and actor, is on a mission to save his own life. However, achieving the kind of success with this battle, as he has had with the acting and dancing roles he’s tackled, is more likely than not, impossible. Pancreatic cancer is one of the, if not the most, deadliest of cancers. Survival rates, once diagnosed at such an advanced stage, are usually in the ballpark of zero to none.


Think back to 1991. Beloved TV actor Michael Landon - another actor whose work I both loved and admired - was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He made an appearance on Johnny Carson where he touted the benefits of using natural remedies to cure himself. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Swayze has been lucky in that he has outlived the usual predictions and statistics of a few months. On Wednesday night, he had his first post-diagnosis interview with Barbara Walters. By his side, as she has been for the last 33 years, was his wife and dance partner, Lisa. The length and strength of his marriage are a true testament to the kind of man he is. He has remained faithful to this one woman in a place so surreal and superficial as Hollywood is, where marriage garners as much respect as a petty thief in a candy shop.

Patrick, at 56, looks gaunt and saddened today – truly a shell of the muscled, fit dancer of year’s past. Of the cancer, he told Walters, it has spread to other parts of his body, making his battle that much more unkind. Swayze is a tough cowboy from Texas. He is stubborn and determined, two traits that may just be making a difference in his unlikely longevity thus far. And despite having begun a second treatment, this one experimental, he knows the road ahead is at once painful to endure and most likely brief and defeating.

Watching him last night broke my heart. Seeing him tear up at his reality - a tough guy admitting that his daddy wasn't much for men, or boys who cried, was heart wrenching. Watching Lisa by his side, trying hard to keep it together through some of the tougher questions ("Have you thought about life without him?"), tore me to pieces. You ask yourself, or just admit that there, but for the grace of God, go I. My heart hurt for him. My anger simmered too, because here we are 18 years since Landon lost his life to this cancer, and we don't seem to be a step closer to better than we were back then. Still no cure in sight! That seems just shameful to me.

Like so many people who call themselves fans of this man and his body of work, I am devastated at his horrible fate and his uncertain future. I am truly saddened by the impending loss of such a good and talented man. If, as so many believe, prayer works miracles, then please let me become a praying fool. I know there are thousands of people on this globe who are battling cancers of all types right this second. But let me be on Team Swayze for right now and allow me to concentrate my prayers for him – not because he is better or worse a man, more or less valuable a person, but because in ways only movie fans can understand, his roles in Dirty Dancing and (another all-time favorite) Ghost have brought me so many years of joy and entertainment.

Swayze made two comments to Walters that came straight from movies. The first was a quote from The Shawshank Redemption. He told her he could either "get busy living, or get busy dying" and he wasn't ready to die just yet. The second was from his own movie, Ghost, where he tells his girlfriend Molly (Demi Moore), "It's amazing, Molly! The love inside, you take it with you." He told Walters that he doesn't know what is on the other side, but that he hopes that he can take the love with him, when he goes. :'-(

I believe that old saying of ignorance being bliss. I truly wish I were ignorant of the facts of pancreatic cancer. I wish I were not aware of the nature of the illness and its usual outcomes. I wish I didn’t read as much as I do about everything I can get my hands on. Or, at the very least, for this particular instance and for this particular man, I wish I didn’t know a thing about pancreatic cancer, so that I could believe with all my heart and soul that he can indeed, beat all the odds and live a long time to remain by the side of his beloved Lisa - still making movies that make us forget our troubles for a moment and smile.