A taxi dance hall is a type of dance hall where dancers (who are usually young women) called taxi dancers are paid to dance with patrons (usually male). The owners of a taxi dance hall provide music and a dance floor for their patrons and taxi dancers. In the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, when taxi dancing was at its peak, patrons of taxi dance halls would typically buy dance tickets for ten cents each. When they presented a ticket to a taxi dancer, she would dance with them for the length of a single song. Taxi dancers earned a commission on every dance ticket that they collected from their male dance partners. The ticket-a-dance system is the centerpiece of the taxi dance halls.
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Famous quotes containing the words taxi, dance and/or hall:
“I have done almost every human activity inside a taxi which does not require main drainage.”
—Alan Brien (b. 1925)
“Ask a wise man to dinner and he’ll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you’ll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people’s entertainment.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“While there we heard the Indian fire his gun twice.... This sudden, loud, crashing noise in the still aisles of the forest, affected me like an insult to nature, or ill manners at any rate, as if you were to fire a gun in a hall or temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)