Patrick Swayze: His Last Dance was a Fight

Long before Emmitt Smith put on his dancing shoes in Season 1 of Dancing with the Stars, Patrick Swayze proved to the world that tough guys can dance. Dance was a family tradition. His mother, Patsy Swayze, was a choreographer, dance instructor and owner of a dance studio in Houston. Patrick studied dance in his mother's studio, but spent his youth pursuing endeavors that blended arts and athleticism, including classical ballet, gymnastics, and ice skating. He studied singing and acting, but never abandoned his dedication to dance. At the age of 20, he moved to New York City and continued training at the Harness Ballet and Joffrey Ballet schools. His first professional experience was as a dancer for Disney on Ice, and he had a role in the long-running Broadway production of Grease.

Despite his artistic pedigree and childhood diet of song and dance, his early 80's films tended toward action movies, or dramas that were action-filled. In Uncommon Valor, he played a tough Viet Nam era marine officer who helps Gene Hackman rescue his MIA son. In Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, Swayze costarred with a talented cast of 'before-they-were-stars' actors including Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Diane Lane, and Ralph Macchio, playing down and outsider street kids who spent their free time cruising and bruising. Red Dawn had a young Patrick Swayze leading a teen insurgency against invading Soviets. Playing best friend and team mate to hockey player Rob Lowe, he got the tar smacked out of him by the brutish nemesis in Youngblood, but this was a hockey movie so a little blood sport is to be expected, and the point is that Patrick Swayze was man enough to take a beating.

It was his breakout role as Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing that pirouetted Swayze into Hollywood's A-list. This film garnered a Golden Globe nomination for Swayze, and became the first film to sell one million copies on video. It has earned over $300 million worldwide. This surprise, low-budget hit brought to the screen Swayze as a tough, working class rebel whose smooth moves on the dance floor reveal the soul of a sensual, classically trained dancer.

Swayze's non-ironic portrayal of a tough guy who can dirty dance was type casting. He was an enigma. He kept himself flawlessly healthy and in shape, rarely missed a chance to show off his well-sculpted chest on screen, yet smoked cigarettes up until his death by cancer. Throughout his life Swayze never lost his love of song and dance, but spent much of his screen time, especially during the first part of his career, doing more butt-kicking than ballet. Riding the crest of his Dirty Dancing fever, Swayze spent the next couple of years churning out Steel Dawn, Tiger Warsaw, Next of Kin and Road House, movies filled with more action and intrigue than song and dance. Yet even in these movies he brought sensitivity, dignity and kindness to his tough-guy roles.

It was not until he played a tough but loving spirit in Ghost that he was again able to bring his own blend of machismo and sensual, artistic sensitivity to the movie masses. One of the most sensual scenes in any film is when the ephemeral Swayze, stuck somewhere between life and death, guides Demi Moore, straddling a pottery wheel, as she molds a pile of clay into a pot. Once again, his film played to large crowds, and again he was nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor.

He was at his best when he was able to harbor the ying and yang of his own paradoxical personality, playing his own polarities against each other. Whether he played a roguish boy or a feisty transvestite, Patrick Swayze, the working class tough guy who grew up wearing tights and doing classical ballet defies categorization. He belongs in the iconography of American film. Even in his 20 month fight against pancreatic cancer, he surprised us with his fragile resilience. He outlived expectations and burst premature predictions of his impending passing. He played the role of a naïve mortal who didn't realize it was it was his time to go, and so, defiantly, he lived on. Like his character in Ghost, he is the spirit who touches us after his death. Patrick Swayze, Dance in Peace.