Taxi dancer

Patrons in a taxi-dance hall typically purchased dance tickets for ten cents each, which gave rise to the term "dime-a-dance girl".

In the 1920s and 1930s, the term "nickel hopper" gained popularity in the United States because out of each dime-a-dance, the taxi dancer typically earned five cents.

[4] Taxi dancing traces its origins to the Barbary Coast district of San Francisco which evolved from the California Gold Rush of 1849.

In its heyday the Barbary Coast was an economically thriving district, inhabited mostly by men, that was frequented by gold prospectors and sailors from all over the world.

When I got home I kept thinking of that plan as a way to get my advanced students to come back more often and to have experience dancing with different instructors.

[20] Taxi-dancing flourished in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, as scores of taxi-dance halls opened in Chicago, New York, and other major cities.

Like other nightlife venues, the taxi-dance hall ran the gamut from the classy establishment to the cramped and seedy hole-in-the-wall.

Also in Lady of the Night (1925) taxi-dancing is the profession of one of the dual roles played by Norma Shearer, with Joan Crawford as body double.

Although treating activity did occur in a good number of halls, and even in some of the more respectable places,[23] it rarely crossed into prostitution.

The taxi dancers who engaged in treating, or the receipt of "presents," typically drew sharp distinctions between the activity and that of prostitution, but they often walked a fine line between the two.

By the mid-1950s large numbers of taxi-dance halls had disappeared, and although a handful of establishments tried to hold on for a few more years in New York City and elsewhere, taxi dancing had all but vanished from the nightlife scene in the U.S. by the 1960s.

Even though most taxi dance halls were respectable venues, staffed with ordinary young women just working to make a proper living, some establishments were more suspect.

The less reputable halls tended to draw a rougher, lower-class clientele, as well as the ire of reformers, and the image of the taxi dancing profession as a whole suffered.

Often the young women who took up taxi dancing determined not to tell their parents and neighbors about their employment, or just outright lied if queried.

The dance halls, which were often sparsely decorated and dimly lit, were usually located on the second floors of buildings in the nightlife areas of cities.

In the hall, the taxi dancers were usually gathered together behind a waist-high rope or rail barricade on one side or corner of the room, and, as such, were not permitted to freely mingle with patrons.

This produced a competitive situation, and on slow nights, which were not uncommon, the taxi dancers often cooed and coaxed to draw attention in their direction.

[28] In time, and with more experience, a dancer usually developed some sort of distinctiveness or mannerism, in dress or personality, to attract the male patron.

In some of the less reputable establishments the dancing at times was particularly close; the dancer used her thighs to make her partner erect, and if encouraged to continue, ejaculate.

[30] It was not uncommon for taxi dancers to date patrons they had met in the dance halls, and this was generally acquiesced to by management.

It was at Wilson's Dancing Academy in Times Square in 1923, where author Henry Miller first encountered Juliet "June" Smerdt, who became his second wife in 1924.

When parents found out, there were three typical outcomes: the young woman either gave up her dancing career, left home estranged from the family or was encouraged to continue.

One dancer [case #15] from the 1920s describes her start at a taxi-dance hall: I was working as a waitress in a Loop restaurant for about a month.

I suppose if something hadn't come along to jerk me out, I'd still be a drifter out on the West Side.In 1932, the University of Chicago Press published The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life by researcher Paul G. Cressey.

Dance hostesses (male and female) are also available for hire in Vienna, Austria, where dozens of formal balls are held each year.

[34] Usually these modern clubs forgo the use of the ticket-a-dance system, and instead have time-clocks and punch-cards that allow a patron to pay for the dancer's time by the hour.