It runs for two days, with a Friday night screening of Dirty Dancing and all-day dancing lessons, watermelon games, and a “lake lift contest,” where couples re-create Johnny and Baby’s famous “lift,” on Saturday. Eight years later, moved to a date in August that coincides with Swayze’s birthday and the film’s debut in theaters, the Lake Lure Dirty Dancing Festival draws an audience of about 3,000 people from around the country. The attendance was impressive enough that it became clear there was an audience for an annual festival. Formerly the Chimney Rock Camp for Boys, it was the setting for the dancers' cabins - including that of Swayze's Johnny Castle - and also where the interior dance scenes, the golf course, and the steps and bridge that Baby (Jennifer Grey) dances across were filmed. In September 2009, Lake Lure held a candlelight vigil for Swayze at Firefly Cove. He died too young at 57, after two years with pancreatic cancer, slightly too early for him to have an official nostalgia-driven comeback. The festival started in the wake of Swayze’s death in 2009. Now the president and CEO of a PR firm, part of the motivation for her move home came from “wanting to do work for nice people,” and she’s correct: People are very nice in this part of the country. Michelle McConnell Yelton, the 38-year-old cofounder of the Lake Lure Dirty Dancing Festival, is a hometown girl who moved back after several years in Los Angeles. The sunsets, where the clouds are illuminated by an unearthly light, leave you clutching your heart in wonder.

When Patrick Swayze mentioned it in his autobiography, The Time of My Life, he referred to it as “this Podunk little town.” Over the years, Lake Lure has become a popular destination for tourists, drawn to its location nestled in the mountains, under a canopy of trees, giving way to a lake so sublime in every hour of the day. The town was first developed in the early 1900s, when three brothers purchased 8,000 acres of land around Chimney Rock, a famous granite outcropping. During the summer season, the population can swell to about 12,000. Lake Lure, North Carolina, has a population of about 1,200 with a median income of $60,000 and a median age of 62.

Dirty dancing location lake lure