Make some sparks of your own when ‘Dirty Dancing’ opens in Las Vegas

Reporting from Las Vegas — Have the time of your life when “Dirty Dancing – The Classic Story On Stage” makes its Las Vegas debut at The Smith Center July 14-19.

Samuel Pergande and Gillian Abbott star as Johnny Castle and Frances “Baby” Houseman, roles played on the big screen by Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey in 1987. The show tells the story of Frances, a rich kid at camp in 1963, and her love affair with her older dance instructor Johnny. The movie spawned a soundtrack that includes “Hungry Eyes,” “Hey Baby,” “Do You Love Me?” and “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life.”

Screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein says the stage production captures the sparks between the two lovebirds even better than the film. She describes the show as “…audiences watching live bodies dancing here and now in the present — on the log, on the bridge, on the dance floor and in the staff quarters at Kellerman’s.”

The stage version includes “more Baby and Johnny scenes, more about the family, more songs I couldn’t afford last time, and, most exciting of all — more dancing,” she says in a press statement.

Bergstein wrote the book for this production, directed by James Powell and choreographed by Michele Lynch based on the original choreography by Kate Champion. A cast of 26 takes the stage.

The theater production started with an eight-week staged workshop in Manhattan in 2001 and was staged for the first time at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, Australia, in November 2004. It’s been on a worldwide tour since.

Tickets cost between $29 and $139 and go on sale on Friday, May 22, at 10 a.m.
Tickets: The Smith Center Box Office, (808) 326-6868