Taxi Dance Hall

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Taxi Dance Halls were ballrooms that flourished in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, where women danced for a fee with mostly male customers. The operator of the dance hall provided the dance floor and orchestra. The mostly male customer (called patron) bought a ticket ( ticket-a-dance , usually at a value of 10 cents) for a dancer ( taxi dancer ), which was valid for a dance. The dancer received a share (about half) and was thus paid according to the number of dances.

They originated in San Francisco in 1913 after the wilder Barbary Coast Dance Halls closed , that is, after the ban on dance events in places where alcohol was served. The new dance halls were called the closed dance hall , but also aroused the displeasure of influential citizens and were closed in San Francisco in 1921 (the law was not repealed until 1999). In other parts of the USA, however, dance schools struggling to survive took over the taxi dance system . In Chicago, too, they initially flourished as extensions of dance schools, but this was soon abandoned.

The Roseland Ballroom in New York City

Sometimes, but not necessarily, there was a transition to prostitution and the red light area . Prostitution was officially banned many times (for example in New York). From a sociological perspective, the Taxi Dance Halls also made it possible for ordinary citizens who did not belong to the upper class to take part in dance events similar to the upper class balls . For the dancers it was an opportunity to earn more money than was otherwise possible at the time. In 1931 there were around 100 Taxi Dance Halls in New York City alone, serving around 50,000 customers a week. One example was the famous Roseland Ballroom in New York, which initially (1919) was only open to white customers, but later opened to other audiences as well. The Roseland Ballroom was in the Broadway theater -Distrikt and was a Mecca of jazz , where the most famous jazz bands and jazz musicians played as Fletcher Henderson and Count Basie . Blacks were often excluded as customers in taxi dance halls.

Partly due to civil protests (such as in San Francisco), the number of taxi dance halls fell sharply until World War II, and in 1952 there was only one in New York City. The tradition did not die out completely in the USA.

Even Charlie Parker made his first musicians job in New York in 1939 in a taxi dancehall (the Parisien near the Roseland Ballroom , but of far less class). The customers were also allowed to choose the music that was played for exactly one minute, then it was the turn of the next ticket.

In 1932 Paul Cressey published a sociological study of Taxi Dance Halls in Chicago, which is considered a classic study from the Chicago School of Urban Sociology . Cressey also collected the slang common at the time. For example, nickel-hopper was a nickname for the dancers because of the 5 cents (nickel) they usually earned per dance. A new dancer was described as punk , light customers as fruit or fish , taking advantage of customers or vice versa as playing , multiracial establishments as black and tan , officials (visitors in official functions) as professionals , stolen goods as hot stuff , relationships with customers as buying the groceries or paying the rent , burlesque shows as monkey shows (also opera ) and customers as monkey chasers .

Cressey described the impression a visitor made when visiting a taxi dance hall for the first time: I had expected all kinds of things, but was still surprised. It was the most multiracial society I have ever seen: Filipinos, Chinese, Mexicans, Polish emigrants, workers and high school students. More disturbing was the men's cynical look at the women and the direct way they approached the women at the beginning of the dance. The girls themselves were young, heavily made up, and spoke little - and when they spoke they used strange expressions like Black and Tan's , Joe's place , pinoys , nigger lovers and other expressions that were unknown to me. My attempt to come into contact with several of the girls met with indifference while at the same time they talked very animatedly with a few men and different girls on site. They seemed polite to everyone else, flirtatious, but at the same time rather indifferent. I left the place under the impression that I was allowed to observe but not participate in the real life of the place.

In Chicago, for example, there were many American Filipinos ( flips or pinoy as they called themselves, whites called them puti ) who called the taxi dance halls schools ( escuelas ) and the dancers as pupils ( colegiate ) or in Tagalog as bata ( Baby). In the slang of the white west side of Chicago they were niggers and dancers who got involved with them nigger lover (another expression for such dancers in the internal slang of the Taxi Dance Halls was on the ebony ). Afro-American cabarets were called Africa , with clearer allusions to prostitution ( playing Africa , employment in such establishments Staying in Africa ).

literature

  • David Freeland: Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan's Lost Places of Leisure , New York University Press 2009
  • Paul Goalby Cressey: The Taxi-Dance Hall: A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life , University of Chicago Press 1932, reprinted in 2008
  • Herbert Ashbury: The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld . Thunder's Mouth Press 1933

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ U. Banerji, Why Men in the 1920s Paid Women for Spins Around the Dance Hall , Atlas obscura 2016
  2. ^ Ross Russell, Charlie Parker, Da Capo, pp. 103ff
  3. ^ University of Chicago Press on the new edition
  4. ^ Cressey, The Taxi Dance Hall, pp. 35f
  5. ↑ Eric Grundhauser, The Lost Lingo of Depression-Era Taxi Dancers , Atlas Obscura 2017
  6. ↑ I had expected almost anything at this dance hall but even then I was surprised. It was the most speckled crew I'd ever seen: Filipinos, Chinese, Mexicans, Polish immigrants, brawny laborers, and highschool boys. More disturbing was the cynical look which the men directed at the girls and the matter-of-fact way they appropriated the girls at the beginning of each dance. The girls, themselves, were young, highly painted creatures, who talked little-and when they did speak used strange expressions to accentuate their talk. They spoke of "Black and Tans," "Joe's Place," "Pinoys," "nigger lovers," and used other terms with which I was not familiar. My attempts to get acquainted with several of the girls met with indifference on their part, while at the same time they each seemed very much alive to a few men and several girls in the place. To everyone else they seemed polite, coquettish, but really quite indifferent. I left the place feeling that I had been permitted to witness but not to participate in the real life revolving around the hall. Cressey, The Taxi Dance Hall, p. 31
  7. ^ School was also a term used by many of the young dancers, Cressey, The Taxi Dance Hall, p. 33