By Eva Neuberg

"Twilo was like a home for me," said Melissa a neatly coiffed brunette in a modish black-and-white striped top. "And Mother, I've gained 15 pounds since they closed down."

Melissa was one of some 200 people gathered at Makor on W. 67th St. to talk about dancing and New York City's cabaret laws. The event (produced by "not-for-profit music community" Mishpucha) was sold out, the room was filled with nervous energy. Some people wore shirts that read DANCER. The crowd ranged from early 20s to 50ish and up - everyone from slick entrepreneurs to a legalize-marijuana guy to a woman from a group harassed for doing the rhumba in Central Park to the owner of imminently closing Wetlands to a Health Dept. worker (attending as a civilian).

After a segment from a documentary-in-progress about the laws called "No Dancing Allowed", New York's Ethan Brown moderated the panel, which included an aggressively running-for-office Norman Siegel, New York Nightlife Association attorney Robert Bookman and reps from Lotus, Baktun, Body & Soul, the Dance Liberation Front and some well-known DJs. It soon became clear that there's a combination of factors making it so hard to promote dancing in this city that, as Baktun's Philip Rodriguez put it, "after 14 years, I'm ready to say, 'I'm out of here'." Attorney Bookman said as far as he was concerned, neither the relevant laws nor the number of people going out had changed much over the last 20 years. "So what has changed? Commercial areas becoming residential. It's about real estate and what's going on real estate in Manhattan - you always have to follow the dollars."

New York's cabaret laws began in the 1920s, during Prohibition, and historically were even more restrictive than they are now. Defining a cabaret as any place with music entertainment that also sold food or drink, the laws at various times limited the kinds of music that could be played and, infamously, required ID cards and fingerprinting for everyone who officially worked in a "cabaret." Through lawsuits and relatively more enlightened city officials, they were chipped away at over the years until now, when pretty much the only thing a cabaret license gets you is the ability to have dancing at your nightspot. This is why you may have been told not to dance at, say, Lakeside Lounge or Brownies or Fun - they don't have cabaret licenses.

Panel organizers say there are now only 296 venues with cabaret licenses in all five boroughs, down from 12,000 in 1961. Some people at Makor felt that the way the law's been enforced in recent years, rather than the law itself, is the problem. David Rabin, owner of Lotus, said a dozen-plus officials might enter his club with flashlights at prime operating hours, ostensibly to see the venue's permits, which, as he put it, "are the same at 5 in the afternoon as they are at 11 at night." With the multitude of city agencies regulating nightclubs - Consumer Affairs, Fire Dept., Buildings Dept., Police Dept., etc. - Lotus might get "visited" on a weekly basis. Baktun's Rodriguez said there was a 16-month lag between when he had all that's supposedly required for a license - sprinklers, exits, inspections all in order - and when he received the coveted piece of paper. "I'd like to single out the Buildings Dept.," he said bitterly. "The IRS and the INS are simple in comparison." A man in the crowd told of paying $3000 to get keys to the new locks placed on his venue by authorities after only a second offense.

For others, the main problem was the restrictive nature of the law itself. "It's an offense to my dignity, to my civil rights, that the government is telling me I can't do this," said Dance Liberation Front's Robert Pritchard, making some wiggly motions in his chair. Some focused on the racialized enforcement of the law, which historians say was originally rooted in a fear of race-mixing. "I can't tell you how many clients tell me authorities have taken them aside and said, 'I'll deny I said this, but if you lose the hiphop night or the salsa night, you won't see us here again,'" said Bookman. Then there's the drug issue, with law enforcements targeting clubs in their attempts to rid us of the scourge of ecstasy.

Toward the end of the discussion, before people ventured downstairs to check out Nicky Siano deejaying or vanished into the sweltering night, a Swiss man sporting dyed purple hair and leopard-print, pointy-toed shoes spoke up. "I don't understand how we can have all this discussion and back-and-forth about changing one little law," he said. "My nation was once considered very conservative, but now you can smoke pot there, you can keep your restaurant open as long as you want and society has not collapsed. What about the big picture?"