The Politics of Dancing

By Gamal Hennessy

This Saturday marks the third annual New York Dance Parade. The festival is a celebration of all forms of dance, the cultures that shape them, and contributions they make to the diversity of New York City. It is also a grass roots attempt to expose the double standards that nightlife faces, specifically the law that makes it illegal to dance in most New York clubs.

Since the 1926, there has been a New York City law that makes it illegal for a bar or club to have more than a few people dancing to music unless it had a license for that activity. The reasoning for this law comes from the social and political climate of the era. The 1920’s saw a rise in the then perceived evils of women’s liberation and interracial dating. Jazz clubs were seen as a flashpoint for these trends. The law gave the powers that be the tools to shut down the venues that promoted behavior that they didn’t like. Luckily, the law didn’t stop the flourishing of jazz, greater rights and independence for women or interracial dating, but it stayed on the books for almost 80 years before it was enforced again.

The Giuliani administration began to use the law to shut down clubs under the pretense of avoiding disasters like the Happy Land Social Club fire. His real aim was to shut venues that didn’t conform to his “quality of life” crusade. As it always does, nightlife found creative ways to get around the law and keep butts moving. Venues used lookouts, warning lights and DJ’s would instantly switch from dance music to soft rock whenever the ‘dance police’ were spotted in the area.

Depending on whom you ask, when Bloomberg came into office he either tried to repeal the cabaret laws or use it to permanently roll back the closing time of New York nightlife from 4 AM to 1 AM. Nightlife advocates, who lobbied for several years to have the law taken off the books, rejected the 2004 proposal because of the connection between dancing and closing times. A subsequent legal challenge by grass roots organizations like the Dance Parade and Metropolis in Motion failed when a judge ruled that nightlife dancing is not protected form of speech under the 1st Amendment. The law currently remains in place. Out of the 1,100 nightlife spots in New York, only 200 currently have a cabaret license.

The cabaret law is a prime example of attacking culture and expression in the name of public safety. It is arbitrary and nonsensical to conclude that music is a protected art form, but dancing is not protected. It is hypocritical and pretentious to see ballet and ballroom dancing as high art but reject salsa and break dancing as artless. It is repressive and inhumane to require a license for something as fundamental as the expressive movement of the human body. While there are issues of overcrowding, ventilation, emergency exits and other security measures in certain clubs, prohibiting dance doesn’t solve any of these problems. People can be packed into a bar tighter than a rush hour subway without dancing. If you try to stop people from dancing, you will not stop overcrowding. You will not make anyone safer. You won’t even stop people from dancing. The only goal that can be reached by forcing a cabaret license on us is undermining one of the pillars that make New York a world class city.

Have fun.
Gamal