HOLLYWOOD -- Patrick Swayze reactivated his dance card to do a cameo in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.
In 1987, Swayze steamed up movie screens and his career when he courted Jennifer Grey on the dance floor in Dirty Dancing.
JoAnn Jansen, whose own coming-of-age story in Havana in 1958 inspired Havana Nights, is one of the film's producers and its choreographer.
She says it was always her dream to have Swayze do a cameo in this new film.
She knew how adamant Swayze had been in the past about not doing a Dirty Dancing sequel. He had turned down a $6-million payday to revive his Johnny Castle character from Dirty Dancing.
"Patrick didn't want his part to seem imposed on the film. He didn't want it to be a gimmick, but insisted it push the story forward," says Jansen.
Swayze plays a dance instructor at a hotel in Havana where Katey Miller (Romola Garai), a young American girl falls in love with the steamy Latin American rhythms.
Jansen adds that Swayze's "only other concern was that our film have the same energy and feel as the original. Once he was convinced of these two things, he became a great cheerleader and a great collaborator."
Jansen says it was a thrill creating the dance sequence for and with Swayze.
"Patrick and I speak the same language. We're both ballet babies. His mother Patsy Swayze was a dance teacher and choreographer, so he started dancing about the time he started walking.
"His style and rhythm is still as natural as walking and talking."
Though Swayze turned heads and hearts with Dirty Dancing, it was not the first time he danced in a major film.
Though uncredited, he danced in John Travolta's 1983 musical Staying Alive.
Garai admits she was nervous the day Swayze arrived in San Juan to film their scene.
"I'm not a dancer. I was never trained as a dancer, so I had to take two months of intensive dance training with Diego Luna, who is my dance partner and romantic interest in the film," explains Garai.
She recalls Swayze was "charming and a true gentleman. He is such an incredible dancer and a very strong lead, which Diego never was, so it was very different dancing with Diego.
"Patrick did most of the work. His body let me know exactly what he wanted, so it was quite easy to follow him."
Garai, who hails from Britain, was first introduced to American audiences in I Capture the Castle and Nicholas Nickleby.
She will be seen next starring opposite Reese Witherspoon in Vanity Fair and is rehearsing for the British premiere of a play about Irish poet James Joyce, called Calico.
Luna, the Mexican star of such films as Y Tu Mama Tambien, Before Night Falls, Frida and Open Range, only got to meet Swayze near the end of filming.
"I don't have a scene with Patrick, which meant he was usually on set when I wasn't," recalls Luna.
"When we did finally meet, he told me he was impressed with the dance footage he had seen. That meant a great deal to me because I am such a klutz in real life."
Swayze did caution Luna.
"He told me to be prepared for directors, producers, actors and movie-goers to believe that I am a dancer.
"He said that people will want me to dance either in movies or just in clubs.
"He said that he had to actively search out roles that changed that perception of him."
After Dirty Dancing, Swayze starred in Roadhouse, hoping to prove he could kick butt with his feet as well as being able to glide around a dance floor.
Havana Nights is not the only movie to get Swayze back on a dance floor.
Last year, he also filmed One Last Dance, a dance film written and directed by his wife Lisa Niemi.
They play former dance partners who come back into each other's lives when an artistic director of a New York dance company dies and they both vie for the position.
Swayze met Niemi in one of his mother's dance classes in Houston when she was 15 and he was 19.
They have been married for 28 years.
Next up for Swayze is the lead role in a television version of King Solomon's Mines.
He is also one of the stars of the special effects dragon movie George and the Dragon, scheduled for release later this year.
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