A beer garden in Weston-super-Mare and two people are standing 30ft apart, in love. Sharon Price and Andy Price, same name, coincidence, were having a drink and debating the first dance for their wedding. They didn’t want a slow dance, because everyone does a slow dance, don’t they? Two bodies slumped gratefully over each other, grinning and red as they mouth the words and shuffle around the space their friends have made. “Darling, you look wonderfuuuul tonight, de de de duh. Derudedah. De de duh da, dah, dah daaah dah.” They didn’t want that, they wanted something… spectacular.
So they looked, of course, to Dirty Dancing. Here is a film that women (especially) associate with love so tightly that there is a whole industry in Dirty Dancing-themed hen nights. Typically one will involve a dance lesson for the hen and her party with a choreographer and champagne, along with garlands and a topless Johnny, for the photograph.
And while, sure, it’s a romantic film, it’s always a mystery to me that it’s become so synonymous with weddings, because it’s not really a film about love – it’s a film about sex. A shy girl they call Baby goes on holiday with her parents, carries a watermelon, and has a sexual awakening with the topless dance teacher. When his colleague Penny gets pregnant, she saves her, first by paying for a termination, and then by learning how to dance.
As Baby’s desire for Johnny unfolds, her dancing improves. One of the things that allows her to be free to explore her writhing leotarded sexuality is the knowledge that, unlike Penny, she has the money to get a safe abortion. I mean, yes there’s romance there, but you have to dig through layers of politics to find it.
So Sharon and Andy are standing on the grass, 30ft apart and two drinks in, and wanting something spectacular. A dance that will reflect their joy at having found each other, something that will reflect the feeling they have when they consider a whole life together, waking up side by side, his thigh between her knees and his arm slightly dead under her neck. Both grandparents, they’ve been together 18 months, they met at work, at a company that manufactures ancillary valves, and they want to fly. They’ve seen Dirty Dancing 30 times, so it seems reasonable to try to recreate the dance where Baby runs across the floor, leaps into Johnny’s arms, and he lifts her above his head. Below Baby a crowd of cheering humans blur into one delighted mass, and mid-air she stretches her new body towards the spotlights, as if a bird above waves.
Except Sharon and Andy are 52 and 51, with historical heart issues unrelated to love. And when Sharon runs across the beer garden and collides with Andy they are both knocked out, instantly. The photo went viral – two bodies, collapsed against a white sky, their trainers touching. “I can remember running towards Andy and then the next thing just struggling for breath and my back was hurting. At first our family thought we were just messing about,” said Sharon. “The paramedics were pretty worried about Andy and cut his T-shirt off and blue-lighted him up to Southmead Hospital. All I could hear was them saying he was going in and out of consciousness. Our feet were still entwined and they had to separate us. We are OK now, but Andy has a bruised back and neck and,” she added, “my back still hurts.”
Is this not a lesson for our time? From films about sex we learn about love, and from being in love we believe we can fly. The love makes us think we are made of heart and lipstick rather than meat and stone, and so able to do impossible things, like take a running jump at your boyfriend and have him hold you 6ft above the ground while you arch your back in a position you can’t even do on fitted carpet. We believe that, despite everything our friends have warned us, this time things will be different, that you can fix your lover up, like a wonky Gumtree table. The love makes us believe we can be better, which is wonderful, and that everything that has come before, such as a mild heart attack, is irrelevant, which is less so.
Sharon has reconsidered their first dance. “I think we’re going to go for a slow one.”
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
