NEW YORK, May 20, 2007
Dancers Boogie On Broadway To Protest Ban
Thousands Demonstrate Against New York City's Cabaret Laws
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Playing instruments and clad in traditional African dress, participants take part in a colorful protest called "Dance Parade," joining thousands of others as they dance their way down New York City streets to call for an end to Prohibition era laws that forbid dancing everywhere except in those establishments possessing a special license. (AP Photo/Verena Dobnik)
There was swing, ballet, tango, tap, salsa, samba, contra, clogging, moshing, hula hooping — even dancing on stilts and roller blades.
"New York cannot take the dance away from us!" one activist yelled Saturday from the top of a flatbed truck, to a pounding rhythm. "It is good for the soul! It is good for the spirit!"
The protesters want the city to repeal the ban, which the state Supreme Court's Appellate Division upheld in February in a ruling against the Gotham West Coast Swing Club and several other plaintiffs.
New York's restrictive dance laws have been on the books since 1926, at the height of the Jazz Age, when they were passed in part to stop interracial public dancing while enforcing a Prohibition-era definition of "public lewdness."
To this day in New York's five boroughs, it is illegal to get up and move your body to a rhythm in any locale where three or more people congregate and food or drink is served — unless the business obtains a dance license.
Fewer than 150 of the city's 5,000 venues with liquor licenses have the dance permits, according to Metropolis in Motion, a grass-roots group that spearheaded the dance parade.
The parade started in the early afternoon near Macy's, with participants clad in bright colors dancing their way down a traffic-free Broadway. The dancing frenzy wound up about two hours later by the white stone arch at the bottom of Fifth Avenue in Washington Square Park.
Participants from toddlers to stooped, elderly women danced in nearly 50 styles, including a Brazilian group and a troupe from Cameroon. It was a rain-or-shine spectacle, with people flashing plenty of bare skin despite the raw weather — no deterrent to beaming spectators lining the route.
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- The article is badly phrased when it describes dancing in a restaurant. This really has nothing to do with restaurants. However, a cabaret license is required of any place where food or drink is sold in order for patrons to legally dance there.
This means that ALL clubs (like Cielo, Pacha, Crowbar in NY) will need a cabaret license to stay open - because their patrons dance AND can buy alcohol. ANY bar you go to will need a cabaret license in order to let you dance on its premises (bars sell alcohol and thus fall under the cabaret law).
Again, this is not about sweaty people dancing in restaurants. ANY venue that sells drinks OR food must have a cabaret license to let you dance there . Think about this next time you go to a bar and want to shake some booty while listening to music and drinking a beer. This law affects everyone.
And next time you're out (especially on LES), try looking for signs posted in some bars and restaurants saying "NO DANCING ALLOWED". Now you know what those signs are about. - Reply to this comment
- The article is badly phrased when it describes dancing in a restaurant. This really has nothing to do with restaurants. However, a cabaret license is required of any place where food or drink is sold in order for patrons to legally dance there.
This means that ALL clubs (like Cielo, Pacha, Crowbar in NY) will need a cabaret license to stay open - because their patrons dance AND can buy alcohol. ANY bar you go to will need a cabaret license in order to let you dance on its premises (bars sell alcohol and thus fall under the cabaret law).
Again, this is not about sweaty people dancing in restaurants. ANY venue that sells drinks OR food must have a cabaret license to let you dance there . Think about this next time you go to a bar and want to shake some booty while listening to music and drinking a beer. This law affects everyone.
And next time you're out (especially on LES), try looking for signs posted in some bars and restaurants saying "NO DANCING ALLOWED". Now you know what those signs are about. - Reply to this comment
- This is to all the idiots who think we want to dance in restaurants. WE DON'T! I do however think that if I'm at a bar where evreyone else is drinking and listening to music that, I should be allowed to shake my a$$ as much as I want. This is supposed to be a country of freedom and all I here is these people with so called lives complaining about noise. This is NYC. The city that never sleeps. That is until now that these people again with so called lives move into a party area and want to stop the music. And for your information I do have a job and a life. So please save all your dumb assumptions for the next idiot. Peace!
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- I see the pint of getting outdated laws off the books but...1) there are dance clubs, you want to dance, go to one 2) People do want to eat without seeing someones behind shake their groove thing. 3) HOWEVER, there are some restaurants that you can eat AND dance at, and if people don't want to see dance while they eat, they can go to the places without the danceing.
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- All of your comments are so rude and crude go get a life
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- Wow, the right to dance in restaurants...what's next? the right to call up all your "boogie" pals to inundate a place where people JUST WANT TO EAT AND NOT SEE YOUR STUPID A$$? That's the problem, these people only care about what they want, and have no real sense of civic pride. They couldn't care less about others who DON'T want to watch their sweaty obnoxious jungle gyrations while they eat.
NO DANCING IN RESTAURANTS.
GO TO THE CLUBS where dancing is allowed. When will you people EVER climb up out of your whining gutter lives, get decent jobs, try to fit in along side the rest of the civil population instead of acting like that racsit psycho Al Sharpton, quit trying to "counter-oppress" everyone in America for slavery 400 years ago?? - Reply to this comment
- The only people made happy from dancing are the drunk dancers! The people trying to eat aren't happy. Who wants to watch a bunch of obese, inebriated dancers when you're dining with friends and trying to talk? Real dancers will go to licensed clubs. The others are show-off drunks, inciting a disturbance. Good for NY. Shut them down.
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- I wish I was in NY for this :) Must have been the best protest ever! Old laws needs to def. be filtered out now.
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- It's ridiculous that these kinds of antiquated laws are still on the books and that the SUPREME Court of NY has to take the time to hear AND UPHOLD the law in a case where people want to dance!! HEY NEW YORK SUPREME COURT: WHY do you want people to BE OBESE? Dance is exercise! Dance is FREE EXPRESSION! Dance MAKES PEOPLE HAPPY!! Doesn't NY SUPREME COURT want people to BE HAPPY!!
Come, JOIN US in the 21st Century!!! - Reply to this comment
