Don’t call her Baby but Rebecca Moore enjoys making a childhood fantasy come true at a Dirty Dancing masterclass

I’m standing in a room that could pass for Johnny Castle’s living quarters in the film, Dirty Dancing: the floor and walls are wooden and the room is lit by kitsch light fittings.

There are pink banners everywhere and just off to the side, two incredibly toned dancers chat casually. If the lights were a little lower, if my heart were beating a little faster and if Patrick Swayze (who played Johnny) were just out of shot, I may as well be a nervous Jennifer Grey (Johnny’s love interest, Baby) getting ready for that all-important and oh-so-iconic sex-scene.

But alas... I’m in the Abingdon Dance Studio for a dance workshop warming up for the Dirty Dancing stage tour that will be cha cha cha-ing its way to Oxford in December.

I remember it well, the first time I watched the film Dirty Dancing. I was a young girl whose attention was hard to win and nearly impossible to keep. But for 100 minutes, from the opening lines as Baby tells us “that was the summer of 1963…”, to the climatic dance sequence, I perched on our old grey carpet utterly transfixed by the lights and the lust and the dance.

In the years between then and now, after months and years spent spinning my way across that same living room floor trying to perfect the final dance with my imaginary Johnny, I – like most young women I talk to – have watched that movie too many times to count. It is – according to stage show producer Karl Sydow – one of Judi Dench’s favourite movies, too.

So you see, we are all absolutely justified in watching it over and over again. However, when offered the opportunity to attend this workshop I was, surprisingly, a little nervous. Because our dearest fantasies are often a let-down when we grow up: as a young teenager I would daydream about having a 9 to 5 job, swishing down the road in my high-heels and hitting rush hour: it seemed exotic and exciting and grown-up.

Fast forward a few years and all illusion is gone: the high heels gave me blisters, and 9 to 5 was actually 7 to 7 thanks to that dreadful rush hour. I feared the same might be true of getting a lesson from real Dirty Dancers. Choreographer Glenn Wilkinson has worked on the show for five years. He knows all too well the perils of trying to bring everyone’s dance fantasies to life.

Glenn describes the difficulty of transforming screen to stage as mainly a matter of perspective: on-screen, many shots are close-up and often show the actors only from waist height: basically, the audience want close-ups of Swayze’s gorgeous torso. “We think we see lots of actual dancing,” Glenn tells me, “but we don’t.” Stage is more unforgiving than an edited camera shot, of course: “Stage is a constant wide-angle shot.

Certain dance moves don’t translate well – so I have to keep the essence and the feeling without keeping every single step,” Glenn explains. Everybody in this dance studio (Johnny’s bedroom as far as I’m concerned) is here because we love the film and we’ve been promised dance. Glenn takes the roomful of us wannabes and we form three lines. I fight sudden flashbacks of a barn dance I once attended but nevertheless manage to listen as he describes the simple steps we’ll “perform” to the Otis Redding song from the soundtrack, I’m a Love Man.

We have professional dancers, Lisa Welham and James Bennett at the front to follow. Their buttocks spring lithely under their leggings, his biceps ripple and her feet move precisely where they’re meant to.

I’m reminded of a scene from the film where Penny and Johnny dance the mambo on the main dance floor, while old ladies gawp from the sidelines. Not that I’m an old lady. But I sure do suddenly feel incredibly old, very uncool and as though my feet were made for traipsing watermelons around a holiday camp rather than sashaying across a floor with a hunky partner.

Glenn spends a long time teaching us some very simple steps, and then we repeat them (many times) until they’re – sort of – perfect. Ultimately, I end up with less than 10 seconds worth of moves.

James (with the biceps) will actually be starring in the stage show of Dirty Dancing when it reaches Oxford in December and his rehearsals with the ensemble begin this week.

The film was, of course, iconic for him, too: “My job is a dancer’s dream,” he confides, as we pretend to look seductively into one another’s eyes for a photo.

Like me, he recalls dancing around his living room as a kid to the film’s final sequence and I find comfort in this, until I realise that he actually became a dirty dancer, whereas I stayed gawping at the sidelines.

By the end of the session had I learnt to dance? That would be overstating it. But I did manage to spin on the spot a few times with vague elegance. I even got to backbend while James held me. He may not be Johnny – but at least his name begins with J.

You grow up and you realise that Baby probably gave up a promising and fulfilling career in international development to stay with her roguish dancer, Johnny. But you also think: at least she learnt to dance.