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A taxi dancer is a paid dance partner in a ballroom dance. Taxi dancers work (sometimes for money but not always) on a dance-by-dance basis. When taxi dancing first appeared in taxi-dance halls during the early 20th century in the United States, male patrons typically bought dance tickets for a small sum each.Cressey (1932), pp. 3, 11, 17.Freeland, David. Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure. (New York: NYU Press, 2009), p. 192. When a patron presented a ticket to a chosen taxi dancer, she danced with him for the length of a song. She earned a commission on every dance ticket she received. Though taxi dancing has for the most part disappeared in the United States, it is still practiced in some other countries.
Still later after the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and during early days of jazz music, a new entertainment district developed in San Francisco and was nicknamed Terrific Street.Knowles (1954), p. 64.Asbury (1933), p. 99.Stoddard, Tom. Jazz On The Barbary Coast. (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1982), p. 10. And within that district an innovative dance hall, The So Different Club, implemented a system in which customers could buy a token which entitled them to one dance with a female employee.Stoddard (1982), p. 13. Since dancing had become a popular pastime, many of the So Different Club's patrons went there to see and learn the latest new dances.Asbury (1933), p. 293.
In 1913, San Francisco enacted a law against dancing in any café or saloon where alcohol was served.Asbury (1933), p. 303. The closure of the dance halls on Terrific Street fostered a new kind of pay-to-dance scheme, called a closed dance hall, which did not serve alcohol.Cressey (1932), p. 181. The name was derived from the fact that female customers were not allowed; the only women permitted in these venues were female employees.Report of Public Dance Hall Committee of San Francisco of California Civic League of Women Voters, p. 14 The closed dance hall introduced the ticket-a-dance system, which became the centerpiece of the taxi-dance-hall business model. A taxi dancer earned her income from the tickets she received for dances.
Taxi dancing then spread to Chicago, where dance academies, which were struggling to survive, began to adopt the ticket-a-dance system for their students.Cressey (1932), p. 183. The first instance of the ticket-a-dance system in Chicago occurred at Mader-Johnson Dance Studios. The dance studio's owner, Godfrey Johnson, describes his innovation:
This system was so popular at dance academies that the taxi-dance system quickly spread to an increasing number of non-instructional dance halls.
Taxi dancers typically received half of the ticket price as wages and the other half paid for the orchestra, dance hall, and operating expenses.Cressey (1932), p. 3. Although they worked only a few hours a night, they frequently made two to three times the salary of a woman working in a factory or a store.Cressey (1932), p. 12. At that time, the taxi-dance hall surpassed the public ballroom in becoming the most popular place for urban dancing.Cressey (1932), p. xxxiii.
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. Roseland in New York City, for example, which offered taxi dancing in the late 1930s, appealed to the more discerning patron. Far more common were halls catering to a working-class clientele. By the mid-1920s taxi dancing had become a nightlife entertainment staple in many large American cities. Reflecting this popularity, the entertainment industry got into the act, releasing the crowd-pleasing song "Ten Cents a Dance" (1930) and the movies The Taxi Dancer (1927), with star Joan Crawford, and Ten Cents a Dance (1931), featuring Barbara Stanwyck. 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. In 1931, there were over 100 taxi-dance halls in New York City alone, patronized by between 35,000 and 50,000 men every week.VanderKooi, Ronald. University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, March 1969.Freeland (2009), p. 190.
At the same time taxi dancing was growing in popularity, the activity was coming under the increasing scrutiny of moral reformers in New York City and elsewhere, who deemed some dance halls dens of iniquity. Most establishments were properly run, respectable venues, but a handful were less so. In the less reputable halls, it was not uncommon to find charity girls engaged in treating working as dancers. Although treating activity did occur in a good number of halls, and even in some of the more respectable places,Ross, Leonard Q. The Strangest Places (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1939), p. 87 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. Periodically, licentious "close" dancing also was happening (see taxi dancer experience below) in some of the shady halls. Considered scandalous and obscene by many reformers, this kind of dancing was another concern to the authorities. Before long taxi-dance hall reform gained momentum, leading to licensing systems and more police supervision, and eventually some dance halls were closed for lewd behavior.Freeland (2009), p. 194. In San Francisco, where it all started, the police commission ruled against the employment of women as taxi dancers in 1921, and thereafter taxi dancing in San Francisco forever became illegal.Cressey (1932), p. 182.
After World War II the popularity of taxi dancing in the United States began to diminish. 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.Clyde Vedder: "Decline of the Taxi-Dance Hall," Sociology and Social Research, 1954.
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. Several taxi-dance halls, for instance, were located in New York City's Times Square.Ross, Leonard Q. The Strangest Places (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1939), p. 81 A barker was normally stationed outside the venue, and patrons typically had to climb stairs to enter the establishment. Before admittance patrons had to buy a ticket or a set of dance tickets. Usually they were not allowed in free to survey the scene.
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. Because the male patron selected his dancing partner, the dancers had to appeal to him from their quarantined position. 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.Ross, Leonard Q. The Strangest Places (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1939), p. 83 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. Those who did not were often not successful. Once selected, the taxi dancer tried to build a rapport with her partner so he stayed with her, dance after dance. Successful taxi dancers usually had a few patrons who came to a hall solely to dance with them, and for long periods. 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.Clement, Elizabeth Alice. Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900–1940 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 190.
Patrons who tired of dancing but wished to continue talking with a taxi dancer usually could do so. A section in the dance hall with tables and chairs was reserved for this purpose. It was called "talk time," although other terms were used. In 1939, at the Honeymoon Lane Danceland in Times Square, the fee to sit and chat with a dancer was six dollars an hour, a princely sum for the time. At Honeymoon, although the dancer and patron were able to sit side by side, a low fence-like structure separated them due to police regulations.Ross, Leonard Q. The Strangest Places (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1939), p. 90 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 June Miller, who became his second wife in 1924. She was working as a taxi dancer. Using either the alias June Mansfield or June Smith, she had started at Wilson's as a dance instructor in 1917, aged 15. (Wilson's was later renamed the Orpheum Dance Palace in 1931.)
Often the dancers were immigrants from European countries, such as Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Due to cultural differences, conflicts often arose between parents and their dancing offspring, especially if the parents were originally from rural areas. Sometimes a young woman of an immigrant family who worked as a taxi dancer was the primary financial support of the family. When this occurred and the young woman supplanted the parent or parents as breadwinner, sometimes she assumed an aggressive role in the family by "subordinating the parental standards to her own requirements and demands."
These conflicts in values between young women taxi dancers and their parents frequently caused the young women to lead so-called "double lives", denying that they worked at a taxi-dance hall. To further this divide, the young women sometimes adopted aliases so news of their activities might not reach their families' ears. 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.
Despite the frequent hardships, many taxi dancers seemed to enjoy the lifestyle and its enticements of "money, excitement, and affection". Most young women interviewed for the study spoke favorably about their experiences in the taxi-dance hall.
One dancer case from the 1920s describes her start at a taxi-dance hall:
A dancer from Chicago case spoke positively of her experiences:
In social settings and social forms of dance, a partner wanting constructive feedback from a dance hostess must explicitly request it. As the hostess's role is primarily social, she (or he) is unlikely to criticize directly. Due to the increased profile of partner dances during the 2000s, hostessing has become more common in settings where partners are in short supply, for either male or female dancers. For example, male dancers are often employed on to dance with single female passengers. This system is usually referred to as the Dance Host program. Dance hostesses (male and female) are also available for hire in Vienna, Austria, where dozens of formal balls are held each year.
Volunteer dance hostesses (experienced male and female dancers) are often used in dance styles such as Ceroc to help beginners.
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