TAKE A SENSUAL STEP WITH “DIRTY DANCING”

Who can forget the sensual and stimulating steps, those monumental and memorable moves, that Baby and Johnny took all those years ago at a resort in the Catskill Mountains in New York?  Those two fiercely free spirits set our joints throbbing as they pumped and pounded their way to passion and paradise and took us along for the romantically robust ride.  Hold on to your socks for they’re about to do it again, this time live at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford from Tuesday, May 24 to Sunday, May 29 as "Dirty Dancing” captures the stage.

Get your dance card ready, the one with the light blue satin cover and the tassel, for an explosion of one heck of a sexy summer love story way back in 1963. The Houseman family is on vacation and seventeen year old Frances, better known as Baby, is about to learn a lot more than badmitten.  Not interested in the typical resort fare, she stumbles upon the forbidden fruit on display at a staffers’ dance party and the temptation is dangled and swallowed whole.

Soon Baby is mesmerized by the resident dance instructor, one smooth moving Johnny Castle, and the spell is cast.  As if bewitched, Baby has no resistance to Johnny’s dangerous pleasures on and off the dance floor.  Quickly she becomes his dance partner, much to the dismay of her family.  From two different worlds, the pair nevertheless move to the same beat in rhythm that is electric.  Johnny and Baby figuratively make love with their moves on the dance floor and we are the vicarious witnesses.

For tickets ($36.50-105.50), call the Bushnell, 166 Capitol Avenue, Hartford at 860-987-5900 or online at www.bushnell.org. Performances are Tuesday to Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m.,Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.and 6:30 p.m.

You’re guaranteed to “have the time of your life” as you discover the answer to the burning question of the day and night “Do You Love Me?"