By Lisa Keys, Forward Staff

Imagine a town in which it's illegal to dance.

No, we're not talking "Footloose" here - the classic 1980s flick in which Kevin Bacon leads small-town teens in a fight against the local ban on boogying. We're talking New York City, where, incidentally, it's illegal to dance in most places.

The city has had stringent dancing laws since the Prohibition era - rooted, experts say, in efforts to suppress the jazz scene in Harlem. Most officials turned a blind eye to the cabaret laws until the late 1990s, when Mayor Giuliani launched his so-called quality-of-life campaign, taking on, with varying success, panhandling squeegee men, sidewalk-crowding hot dog vendors and, alas, kids looking to shake it on a Saturday night.

Fed up with a law that encroaches upon what many view as a basic right, a group of music-industry types, organized as the Mishpucha, a Yiddish word meaning "family," have decided to do something about it. Last Thursday at Makor, the Jewish cultural center for 20- and 30-somethings, the Mishpucha organized "NYC: No Dancing Allowed," an evening of film, discussion and dancing, all centered on the idea that New York is becoming increasingly inhospitable to clubs.

A collective, the Mishpucha is "non-denominational, but most of us are Jewish," said Mishpucha founder Adam Shore. "We knew we were going to be this community - everyone is a friend, but what do we call ourselves? A family? A posse?"

In the two years of its existence, the Mishpucha has organized events ranging from DJ nights at Makor to highly publicized "Take Back the Decks" events that encourage women to try a hand at DJ-ing. Last week was its first event highlighting the cabaret laws. "People in the nightlife world, the music world, have been bitching and bitching about this for years and nobody's done anything about it," said Mr. Shore, a former employee of TVT Records.

During the panel discussion, people bitched some more. "We have to fight and support things that shouldn't even be discussed - it's ludicrous," said filmmaker Juli Berg, who showed excerpts from her film, "No Dancing Allowed."

From 1997 to 2000, the city temporarily closed 69 bars and clubs for violating the cabaret laws, slowly transforming dancing from a social norm into a social ill. Dancing advocates say the licensing requirements are onerous, expensive and time-consuming. Back in 1960, there were 12,000 places in the five boroughs for New Yorkers to get their groove on. Today there are 296.

Much of the blame for the sad state of New York's nightclub scene was placed squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Giuliani. Former New York Civil Liberties Union director and public advocate candidate Norman Siegel referred to the mayor's quality-of-life campaign as "anti-fun practices." The self-described troublemaker added that Mr. Giuliani "probably doesn't know how to dance."

House-music legend Nicky Siano bemoaned the mayor's pandering to real estate interests. "He's left us no space to open a club; there's no commercial space anymore," he said.

Real estate, said Robert Bookman, legal counsel for the New York Nightlife Association, is what it's all about. "The issue of young people going out at night is hardly new," he told the Forward. "What's changed is the encroachment of residences into areas that were previously commercial zones. Tribeca, Soho, Flatiron, downtown Manhattan: These were where late-night spots were supposed to be located. The whole concept of zoning is that certain uses don't mix well with each other and they need to be separated.

"When I was young and lived in Greenwich Village, if I had complained that in the spring when my windows were open it was noisy because of the bars, they would have laughed at me," Mr. Bookman added, noting that today "I'm at home and asleep when these places get going."

Calls to the city's Department of Consumer Affairs were not returned. In 1997, Mr. Giuliani defended the cabaret laws in the New York Daily News. "The rule makes sense, and it is helpful in terms of improving the quality of life of all of the neighborhoods of New York City," he said.

According to nightlife activists, not only is dancing fun, but it's a cash cow for the city. According to survey conducted by the NYNA, music and dance clubs contribute almost $3 billion each year to the city's economy and have created more than 27,000 jobs. About 24.3 million people attend the city's clubs each year, a number greater than the attendance of Broadway acts, sports events, the Empire State Building and the Metropolitan Museum of Art combined, according to the study.

Groups such as the Dance Liberation Front have organized innovative protests, from creating the world's largest hokey-pokey circle in front of City Hall to last summer's Million Mambo March, in which some 100 protesters danced their way from the East Village's Tompkins Square Park to Washington Square Park.

Although Mr. Bookman thinks groups like the DLF are "great," he points out that they have had little effect in the enforcement of the cabaret laws. "Young people need to get involved in politics," he said. "Get out and vote. They need to get involved in campaigns, volunteer, donate money."

Others suggest fudging nightclubs' identities in order to avoid the cabaret laws. Dancing is allowed at Makor, for example, because it is a "cultural center" and therefore exempt from the peering eyes of the police. "A nightclub can be a cultural institution," suggested Mr. Shore. "I assume you can dance at religious institutions ‹ dance is an important part of many rituals ‹ but I'm sure they don't have cabaret licenses."

But even cultural institutions such as Makor have had problems because of dancing, although with their neighbors and not with local officials. Residents of West 67th Street tried to block construction of Makor but lost because the zoning laws allowed a community center. Still, as one disgruntled neighbor told the Times in January 2000, "they billed themselves as a community center and became a nightclub."