McCarter Theatre Presents New Twist on Rodgers and Hart’s “Ten Cents a Dance”

Posted on 11. Sep, 2011 by PNN Editor in Arts, Events, Theater

Ten Cents A Dance – Sep 9 – Oct 9 2011

Isn’t It Romantic? Tony Award-winner John Doyle (Broadway’s Sweeney Todd and Company) brings his trademark twist to the Rodgers and Hart songbook in this stylish new production with a cast that doubles as the orchestra! Rodgers and Hart’s jazzy and sophisticated tunes will keep you bewitched, bothered, and bewildered in this inventive song-cycle.

View Mccarter Theatre Production Website

– Rodgers and Hart’s 1930 hit song, “Ten Cents a Dance,” is a moving and melancholy ballad sung from the point of view of a dance hall hostess, otherwise known as a “dime-a-dance girl” or “taxi dancer.”

In the 1920s, pay-as-you-go dance halls were gaining popularity in every major American city as an inexpensive and intimate way for a gentleman to spend an evening. Ten cents bought a ticket worth 90 seconds with a chosen “taxi dancer,” named aptly (if indelicately) for customers “renting” her like a cab for hire. The dancer would take a patron’s ticket, rip off half for the house fees, and collect her five cent stubs in the hem of her stockings to cash in at the end of the night. A taxi dancer could earn up to $40 a week, two to three times what she could have earned in the local factory.

Being a ‘dime-a-dance girl’ was a scandalous profession. Polite society was convinced the ballrooms were merely covers for prostitution, and the parallels of selling female company were undeniable. Management carefully controlled the ratio of blondes, brunettes, and redheads available for the gentleman callers, and sometimes tracked the how much each woman was dancing in a night by strapping pedometers to their ankles. To elevate their image, some dance halls advertised 90 second “dance lessons” from a student’s choice of beautiful, voluptuous teachers. Older women or security guards monitored the behavior in the ballroom, and signs declaring “No Indecent Dancing” decorated the walls, though they often didn’t stop customers from trying to get close with their chosen lady. Customers routinely got into brawls over a favorite girl or lurked outside, hoping to get a date at the end of the evening.

Despite the general opinion of the day, and even a 1932 sociological study that identified taxi dancing as a profession chosen by “morally and sexually corrupted women,” dance hall hostesses were not the gold-digging floozies they were believed to be. More often, the dancers were just looking for escape, either through the opportunity to earn a decent living or by meeting a man on the dance floor who might sweep her off her feet and away from the daily grind of the ballroom.  Rodgers and Hart, blending beautiful melodies with bittersweet lyrics, perfectly captured the desires, both wistful and wanton, of the iconic dime-a-dance girl of the jazz age.

– Anne Joy and Erica Nagel