Even though the dancing in Dirty Dancing is carefully choreographed—and that choreography process is actually part of the plot—not every step was planned. For one thing, the crawling dance that is one of the best-known scenes in the movie—the rehearsal sequence set to Love Is Strange—was the product of director Emile Ardolino’s fondness for ad-libbing. Swayze and Grey got on the floor of the dance studio during a warm-up, and Ardolino asked them to do it again for the camera. Even the dances that were planned weren’t always the product of lots of practice. The climactic lift, the move replicated to such great effect in 2011’s Crazy, Stupid, Love, didn’t get any rehearsal. Grey has said that she was too scared to do it before she absolutely had to, even though, according to Swayze’s memoir, the two did manage a lift during their dance audition. And the lift isn’t the only element of the famous last dance scene that almost didn’t happen: Swayze didn’t love one of his lines from that scene and tried to get it cut. What was the line? “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQUmA-F0rkg]