Listening just now to Doris Day singing "Ten Cents A Dance," is there still any taxi-dancing or has it become extinct?

pagea

Taxi-dancing still seems to be alive and well. http://www.afterfive.co.uk/maps/Taxi_Dancing-links.html Mar 22 09, 6:25 AM

Baloo55th

By heck, that's a badly designed site! I don't think that what they call 'taxi-dancing' is what either Doris Day or Baloo mean by it. We are referring to the '10 cents a dance' girl for hire on the dance floor for use by unaccompanied males (the reverse can be the case too - less common as gatherings of unaccompanied females working far from home were pretty rare). Those people on the site referred to seem to be teaching dancing rather than providing brief partnerships. I think, anyway. It's not easy to understand exactly who they are and what they are doing. Mar 23 09, 5:52 AM

zbeckabee

Taxi-dance halls flourished in America during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1931 there were over 100 taxi-dance halls in New York City, and between 35,000 and 50,000 men would go to these halls every week. Even by 1925, however, the taxi-dance halls were already coming under attack by reform movements that insisted on licensing, police supervision, and even succeeded in closing down some taxi-dance halls for lewd behavior. However, even today some cities still have clubs where female employees can be hired to dance with patrons. These clubs no longer use the ticket-a-dance system, but have time-clocks and punch-cards that allow the patron to pay for the dancer's time by the hour. Some of these modern dance clubs exist in the same buildings where taxi dancing was done in the early 20th century. The Dreamland club of Los Angeles is just such an establishment. In the 1930s it was called Roseland Roof, and was owned by the Fenton brothers. When the Fenton brothers sold the club in 1981, the new buyers renamed the club to Dreamland, and continued taxi dancing in its original ballroom. No longer called taxi-dance halls, these latter day establishments are now called Hostess Clubs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_dance_hall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_dancer Mar 23 09, 6:22 AM

Baloo55th

Ta very much to both of you. Reading Zb's links, I think I can understand pagea's link a bit better now, too. Mar 23 09, 7:22 AM