Nickel-Hoppers

“The Academy” hired thirty girls and they were supposed to fill the role of dancing instructors, but this was merely a pretext, and the lure of the place was that it furnished young women who could be danced with and spoken to without the formality of an introduction.

The price of each dance was twelve cents, out of which the girls received five, and the dances were limited to one and a half minutes and continued without a pause until the closing hour. On a thriving night it was possible for the girls to dance at least a hundred and twenty times, and their weekly earnings, supplemented by a variety of tips, amounted to fairly neat sums. They danced like painted, flexible, unemotional dolls, and held weariness at arm’s length with the tropical indifference of youth, although afterward as they straggled from the hall the penalty became evident in their dragging, gaudily slippered feet and the rounded complaint of their shoulders. They made no pretense of instructing the men who could not dance, but simply walked with them around the floor, in a halting or scampering fashion, with a look of pouting martyrdom on their faces.

by Maxwell Bodenheim (an excerpt from Crazy Man)