Dirty Dancing Lives On Forever at the Mountain Lake Lodge

Over at Vanity Fair, Katie Calautti takes a visit to Mountain Lake Lodge in Virginia, which hosts Dirty Dancing-themed weekends for fans interested in a weekend full of Baby and Johnny cosplay. The actual movie was set at Kellerman’s, a fictional lodge in the Catskills, but it was filmed at Mountain Lake and most of the recognizable landmarks from the film are still there. The ballroom that contains Baby’s famous corner, sadly, is not—that scene was shot at a converted gym in North Carolina that has since demolished. Sad for those who wished to practice their running leaps into the arms of a strapping, handsome, man, but hey, that’s okay.

I’m not surprised that this exists, but I am curious about who would spend both time and money to attend a Dirty Dancing-themed weekend. Per Vanity Fair, it’s a combination of Dirty Dancing obsessives and Patrick Swayze fans, who book the room that he stayed in over a year in advance and repeatedly steal the shower curtain.

The entire scene sounds a little bit kooky, but ultimately sweet, sort of like the film itself. I am decidedly not the target audience for this, but I respect and admire those whose dedication to a movie about dancing, love, watermelons and abortion compels them to put on a bodysuit and a pair of Keds and dance the night away.