It’s been a week since I’ve watched Dirty Dancing and the song, Hungry Eyes from the soundtrack is still going repeat mode on my playlist.
Gushcloud (thank you!) gave us tickets for this stage version of the classic 1980s film and I asked my friend Karen, whom I know is a huge Dirty Dancing fan along. She’s probably only watched the movie like about 20 times.
Dirty Dancing tells the story of Baby, a young girl from a wealthy family who dreams to be part of the Peace Corps. During summer vacation, she travels to a resort with her family. This resort employs dancers to give residents dance lessons and to also entertain them at the in-resort shows. Baby falls for the lead dancer, Johnny Castle and her parents disapprove because of the social inequality between them. This is a story about a young girl’s coming of age and about her finding who she is.
Johnny Castle, played by understudy Luigi Vigliotti and Baby, played by Bryony Whitfield.
Always a fan of dance musicals, Dirty Dancing did not fail in the dance segments with their strong leads and ensembles. Most of the songs from the soundtrack were also sung live. I especially enjoyed watching Penny, played by Milla De Biaggi. Her technique, style and flair is extremely impressive and she’s such a joy to watch.
Penny, whom in my opinion stole the show.
Us, Gushcloud bloggers after the show. We were lucky to be invited backstage for a tour after.
Here’s us in the Green Room. The Green Room functions as a venue for actors not required on stage and is a waiting area and lounge before/after/during a performance. No one really knows why the Green Room is called, the Green Room. Rumours have it that the first such waiting room was painted green?
We ran into Baby backstage!
Props and costumes all laid out nicely, ready for the next show. Quick change during the show all happens extremely fast, so everything needs to be placed perfectly in place. Such as in the 1st picture with the pink and blue skirt. You can imagine the actors hopping in and their dressers pulling up the skirt quickly.
Here’s the stage manager pointing to where the band is seated during the show.
Wardrobe area for individual actors.
Stage manager explaining to us that all details down to zippers and buttons were followed as closely as possible to those available and used during the 1960s.
‘The’ red dress worn by Penny. The quick change is so fast that often times, the dressers had to cut off the strings at the back that held the dress up to remove the dress in time. The wardrobe mistresses have to prepare loads of extra strings for the lace-up back.
Some wigs worn by the actors.
Part of the backstage.
More retro props.
Here’s us on-stage. The stage was a lot smaller than how it looked from the audience. This stage version of the film tried to mimick the many scene changes in the film with the use of multi-media effects, which I thought was really creative, brilliant and really stood out.
Final picture on-stage.
Thank you for the wonderful experience Gushcloud! 🙂
Dirty Dancing will be playing at the Marina Bay Theatres till 16th June.
Get your tickets at sistic or from the MBS website!
xoxo
xoxojeneen.com 