Dirty Dancing: Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey play around in adorable rehearsal video from 1986

1 June 2022, 17:27 | Updated: 17 March 2023, 12:00

The video shows Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze practicing their dance moves and larking around for the camera in candid footage from the 1987 hit movie 'Dirty Dancing'.

Dirty Dancing is, without a doubt, one of the best loved and most popular movies of all time.

The classic film, set in 1963 and filmed in upstate New York, was made on a shoestring budget and shot over just 44 days in October of 1986.

The film was first aired at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987 and while costing just $5 million to make, has earned over $214 million worldwide.

Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze had just finished filming their first film together Red Dawn when the pair were cast as Johnny Castle and Frances "Baby" Houseman and began hours of latin dance rehearsals for the movie.

• Dirty Dancing sequel starring Jennifer Grey set in the 1990s is confirmed - full plot details revealed
• The truth about Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey’s complicated relationship
• Dirty Dancing's Jennifer Grey wishes she could apologise to Patrick Swayze after real-life "tensions"
• Remembering the Dirty Dancing movie prequel starring Patrick Swayze we all forgot

In unearthed footage the pair can be seen practising their sizzling moves over and over again while being overseen by a pair of Dirty Dancing's dance coaches.

The scene then cuts to Patrick and Jennifer trying 'the lift' for the first time in the safety of the studio, eventually completing the difficult move that would become the most famous scene in the movie.

Among numerous reports that Jennifer and Patrick clashed on set, subsequent statements from both the stars and other people who worked on the movie confirmed there were difficulties between the pair.

• QUIZ: How well do you remember Dirty Dancing?
• Dirty Dancing The Musical: Meet the real-life Johnny and Baby and how Patrick Swayze inspired them

Jennifer Grey told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016: "It was our second movie we'd done together within a short time — we did Red Dawn first and then Dirty Dancing. He was a great dancer and he was fearless.

"His fearlessness with my fearfulness — like his lack of Jewishness and my super Jewishness — together was like a marriage where you have two opposites. He'd do anything and I'd be scared to do anything. 

"He smelled really good, his skin was really nice. He was really strong and he was very protective and his heart was very much in it," she added.

• Where are the cast of Dirty Dancing now?
• Vintage footage of Patrick Swayze 'dirty dancing' with his wife Lisa Niemi is sensational

Jennifer later said that filming Dirty Dancing in the 1980's was a highlight of her life: "At the time, it felt like it was a loss of innocence but looking back now, it just looks like preschool compared to where we are now in terms of innocence," she told The Hollywood Reporter.

"I think it was a really exciting time. The fashion was terrible, the hair was terrible, but the music was great."

Watch Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze's behind the scenes dance practice below:

Dirty Dancing Behind the Scenes Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze

Patrick, on the other hand was more critical of Jennifer and according to The Telegraph wrote of his time on the set of Dirty Dancing in his book The Time of My Life, written just weeks before his death in 2009.

“She seemed particularly emotional, sometimes bursting into tears if someone criticized her,” Swayze said.

“Other times, she slipped into silly moods, forcing us to do scenes over and over again when she’d start laughing.”

Swayze wrote that he “didn’t have a whole lot of patience for doing multiple retakes.”

Dirty Dancing (1987) Official Trailer - Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey Movie HD

Dirty Dancing's producer Linda Gottlieb didn't mince her words, telling Huffington Post in 2012: “He felt like she was a wimp,” adding, “She was genuine, naïve; you would do a take eight times and Jennifer would do it differently every time.

"Patrick was a pro; he would deliver the same thing again and again. She would cry easily, she was emotional and he sort of made fun of her. He was a macho guy.”

However, choreographer Kenny Ortega told People that the tension added to the chemistry on set: “There was something there between the two of them that was unexplainable. They were human fireworks."

Surprise proposal on the Dirty Dancing stage