Basic Information About the Stage Musical

I never have seen the Dirty Dancing stage musical. I have seen a few YouTube video clips, and it looks wonderful. I look forward to watching it some day.

I have read some articles about the musical. So far, the best I have read is on the Broadway World website, an article titled Dirty Dancing -- The Classic Story on Stage. The article includes the following passages.

Dirty Dancing - The Classic Story On Stage will officially open a new production and North American tour ... October 5 - 7 ... in more than 50 markets in North America, including New Orleans, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore and more. Check out the full tour route here!

[The musical] features an eight-piece band ...

The production's book is written by Eleanor Bergstein, author of the original script of the film ...

"As I learned how many people watched the movie over and over and over, I began to think that what they really wanted was to share more physically in the event, to step through the screen and be there while the story was happening. And if that was true, then its natural form was theatre - live audiences watching live bodies dancing and singing here and now in the present - on the log, on the bridge, on the dance floor and in the staff quarters at Kellerman's.

"Writing it for the stage, I was also able to add more scenes with Baby and Johnny, more about the family, more about the period in which it was set, more songs I couldn't afford last time, and, best of all - more dancing. We have added 20 new original scenes and 36 numbers of live music played by an eight piece band onstage, which invite the audience to come into Kellerman's and experience the story in a whole new way as a live event as it happens."

[The musical] was first performed at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, Australia in November 2004 before embarking upon a hugely successful tour of Australia and New Zealand. A new production opened at the Theater Neue Flora in Hamburg, Germany in March 2006 ... on London's West End in October 2006 ...

[The musical] continued its success with its commercial premiere in the Western Hemisphere in Toronto at the Royal Alexandra Theatre on November 15, 2007. ... The production's first North American tour began, ... in Chicago on September 2, 2008 ...

The show returned to Australia with a new smash hit tour that premiered in late 2014 in honor of the stage production's 10th anniversary. ...

NETworks Presentations (Producer), from its inception over 20 years ago, has been an industry leading producer and manager of touring musical theatre productions .... Having toured over 70 productions internationally, NETworks current touring productions include ... The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Elf the Musical, Finding Neverland, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, Dirty Dancing, The Sound of Music and ...The King and I. ...

Magic Hour Productions was founded by Eleanor Bergstein in 1994 to develop and produce works by herself and others for print, film, and stage. Magic Hour Productions has been involved in the development and production of the stage musical of Dirty Dancing since its inception, including the first staged workshop in New York in 2001. Currently, Magic Hour Productions is working to bring Dirty Dancing to new territories around the world, including Greece and Japan.

In addition to Dirty Dancing, Magic Hour Productions is developing a new musical by Ms. Bergstein set in late 1960s London, a film to be shot in Rome, and a romantic comedy film to be shot in Slovenia. ...

=====

The ABD Stagelight website has an interesting article about the musical's lighting.

The spectacular stage production ... accommodates an enormous production that includes LED walls, Pani projections and over 150 automated lights. Other production elements include a 29 m rear projection screen, a curved LED wall which splits four panels built into the set and two full-sized radio controlled cars. The set itself includes a 12-metre outer revolve and an inner revolve which splits into three sections. ...

The show is a unique mélange of theatre play, dance and music, and its 78 scenes feature a fluid variety of looks, designed to evoke different times of the day and the changing moods that go with them. ...

The lighting, the set and the video needed to be absolutely seamless, so that the audience can't tell where one ends and another begins. There's also live-camera action and at times the video screen looks like a wall in the set, while at others it can have images of people dancing or of scenery, or shows famous scenes from the film such as where Johnny Castle teaches Baby how to dance.

"There are Pani projections of trees and skies, and it's all designed to illustrate the different times of day, which is what the piece is about, in an allegorical way. "So a lot of work is done on the backdrop screen, conveying times of day, clouds moving, sunrise and sunset and during a scene called the Magic Hour when everything comes to life at dusk. The scene is about memory and reflection, and it looks magical with all the colours slightly heightened. ...