Nobody puts Mancunian Vintage in the corner: Dirty Dancing mambo masterclass

The iconic drum beats of The Ronettes Be My Baby in Dirty Dancing’s opening scene sets my heart a-flutter as soon as it begins.

Add the slo-mo black and white montage of Kellerman’s staff dirty dancing in the staff quarters, a glass or two or vino and I’m set for the night.

BE MY BABY: Opening scene of Dirty Dancing*

So when I heard that the cast of Dirty Dancing were packing their bags and performing another national tour I got rather excited.

When it was confirmed that Manchester was going to be one of their pit-stops later this spring I was a very happy girl indeed!

Back in 2004 the magic of the film was transferred to the stage and it’s proved to be phenomenally successful holding sell-out runs in Germany and London.

And I’m sure Manchester will be no exception.

As a special something to their Manchester die-hard fans, they held a mambo masterclass last week.

And I was invited…

For the full MM write-up, click here.

We had a go at learning the basic mambo steps, cue much foot-stomping and starting on the wrong beat (you’re meant to go on two, not one!)

Alas there are no pictures of me strutting my stuff, all the images came out really blurry, what can I say? I must have been busting out some ‘impressive’ moves!

MASTERCLASS: Learning to mambo

Even though we were by no means seasoned professionals by the end of the class, you couldn’t help but feel exhilarated at the fact that Johnny’s Mambo was blaring out of the speakers and you could move in a similar way as they did in the film.

When Johnny (Tim Hodges) and Penny (Jacquie Biggs) took to the floor to do a free-style version of the dance, we as a captive audience were amazed at the quality and strength of their dancing.