Dancing Dangerously: How Paid Dancers Face Violence

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Adriana Valderrama was a dancer. Like hundreds of her colleagues, she would probably sit at a nightclub, martini in hand, waiting for a man to approach her.

The man would probably be a migrant worker, starved of a woman's touch after a long day's work at a testosterone-charged construction site.

He pays her anything from $2 for a song to $10 a set. If he really likes her, he might even fork out $40 for an hour of intimate dancing at the crowded dance floor.

This is a perfectly legal form of work for Adriana, as no sex is involved. But as one might expect, it's an occupation rife with danger.

Adriana, unfortunately, became a testament to the fact. In Dec 2007, the 24-year-old and her dance partner were shot. He survived, but she did not. Till today, the police have arrested no one. They believe the gunman fled to Mexico.

Girls who work similar jobs across New York's immigrant clubs face similar risks. They come mainly from Latin American countries, and are single moms seeking money to support their families back home.

The clubs make for unsafe workplaces. Brawls are not uncommon when drunk men disagree.

Carla Ramirez, 26, a dancer said: ""There are times when the guys are drinking, and they start to fight and throw bottles." She added that her club hires bouncers to protect the girls.

Besides violent clients who make sexual advances, dancers complain of exploitation. Sometimes, a client doesn't pay up, and some employers do not have their interests at heart.

A lawsuit against the Flamingo, a tropical-themed nightclub in Queens, alleges that the bar's owners failed to pay wages and overtime, subjected the dancers to video surveillance in a dressing room, and required them to pay entry fees of up to $11, plus fines if they were late for work or missed a day.

Diana Trejos, a former dancer who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, complained that the women were controlled as if they were employees: They were given schedules, required to have doctors' notes if they missed work because of illness and required they buy uniforms for theme nights.

Attorneys for the owners of the business asked a court to dismiss the complaint, arguing that nothing in the suit was true.

The dancers and their lawyers disagree.

"You can't call a worker an independent contractor and avoid the requirements under the labor law," said Elizabeth Wagoner, an attorney for a community organization that is supporting the former Flamingo workers in their lawsuit and has organized protests against the nightclub.

Of course, there's also the stigma of being paid dancers. Many think, wrongly, that they are prostitutes. Some clubs mandate that girls dress skimpily.

In fact, Raimez, a mother of three, hides the fact from her husband.

"He thinks I work in a restaurant," she said. "He doesn't like me drinking or dancing with another man."

Some of the men she dances with spend hundreds of dollars dancing and drinking a night.

One of them, who only wants to be known as Emilio said: "When a man is lonely, he looks for someone who he can talk to and someone he can spend time with."

Read more about paid dancers here.