Successfully selling the fantasy of sex is at once performance art and business transaction: getting into character, being embodied and still responsive to the audience, making deals and keeping track of money, cultivating relationships are all part of the job. Midnight ballerinas — a title Baltimore’s exotic dancers carry as a proud self-identification — take seriously the rituals of glamour as part of their craft. These are the women making the nightlife scene a stage for their leading roles in the daily theatre of the 400 block of E. Baltimore Street.
“If you’re gonna do it, go big or go home, bitch,” says Dee, a 27-year-old from East Baltimore. She’s open with Baltimore Beat about her experience as a dancer, but prefers the use of her nickname to protect her privacy. Dee has danced at various adult entertainment venues on the stretch of E. Baltimore Street known as The Block, tucked between Holliday and Gay. Beyond the glamour, being a midnight ballerina taught her what it meant to hustle.
Over the phone, Dee shares other lessons she’s learned working in the clubs over the years. “Have a career, have a goal, write it down on a piece of paper, and cross each and every one off. Think of investing your money in something long term,” she says.
“And don’t do drugs!”
In 2017, shortly after Dee graduated from high school, she saw her homegirl flash a stack of cash on social media and began to imagine the kind of financial freedom that might be possible as an exotic dancer. Determined to give it a try, she took on a night shift at Oasis, a popular strip club on The Block.
That first night was rough, she tells me. Clubs on The Block require dancers to pay between $25 and $50 to dance during night shifts — Dee says she didn’t even make that money back until her second shift. She compares that night to a scene in the 1998 Ice Cube film “The Players Club”: the protagonist, a young stripper and college student named Diana, runs from a private dance and hides in the locker room, embarrassed after her journalism professor arrives at the club one night. “That’s literally how my first night was,” Dee says.
But with every additional shift, Dee’s confidence grew. She learned how to approach customers and earn more tips. She came to enjoy the rhythms of getting ready for the night, doing her hair and make up, and picking an outfit to match her stage persona. Still, life for midnight ballerinas ain’t no crystal stair. Dee couldn’t find the financial stability she had envisioned when she saw her friend’s post. “Don’t believe what you see on Instagram. There could be a night I’m making zero dollars,” she says. “Or, I could make $600 or a band.”
The inconsistent income quickly prompted Dee to build a primary career for herself in the medical field. Getting certified as a nursing assistant helped her support herself financially, and since 2019 she’s worked as a nurse full time, taking only occasional weekend shifts at the clubs. But she hasn’t forgotten that it was her earnings from dancing that paid for her nursing license and for her first car that would take her to and from her job. Instead of quick and easy stacks of cash, Dee found dancing to be an opportunity for steady and intentional investments into her long-term goals.
The story of The Block has always been a labor story.
The story of The Block has always been a labor story. The economic challenges that Dee describes reflects strippers’ continued struggle to advocate for fair pay and better working conditions in the city. A 2023 lawsuit led by former dancer Jaclyn Prasch resulted in $86,932.23 in damages being awarded to a group of employees of clubs Chez Joey and Bottoms Up for unpaid wages. The judgement ruled that the clubs violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, ruling in favor of the dancers, bartenders, and security guards joining in the class-action suit.
The case offers insight into the ways inconsistent tips affect dancers who rely on the clubs for the majority of their income. Prasch described often working over 30 hours a week and still being misclassified by employers as an “independent contractor.” This kind of misclassification, although illegal, is not uncommon as a way that employers avoid paying staff minimum wages. The denial of wages did not stop the clubs from garnishing dancers’ earnings up to 50% for “house kickbacks,” a term which refers to money taken out of dancers’ individual incomes for the night and going to the club as profit.
But amidst an economy stretched thin by unemployment, the rising cost of living, and a decline in alcohol consumption and in-person gatherings, there are problems that organizing and collective bargaining may not be able to fix. In 2021, dancers and the owners of several of the bars on The Block united to protest against the city’s COVID restrictions on work for dancers as “nonessential,” while other live entertainment venues were allowed to reopen. This threatened incomes for dancers and club owners alike. A year after the protests in front of City Hall, Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson proposed imposing a 10 p.m. curfew on The Block in an “emergency bill” blaming crime on the city’s red-light district. Again, performers and the owners of the clubs united to protest government action, calling the move a land grab. “This is about the price of real estate,” John Sachs of Club Chez Joey told the Baltimore Brew. After the outcry, Ferguson backed down, though the club owners had to pay for extra police security. These incidents reflect The Block’s struggle to stay afloat as much as it does the resilience and unity at the heart of the community.
Still, none of this was exactly good for the pocketbooks of dancers like Dee.
When I visited the clubs one frigid January evening, business was not exactly booming. There were only four clubs open on The Block that day. I stopped in Club Chez Joey, which looks like many of the other strip clubs in the area: A blacked-out door leads to a narrow corridor stretched out between the bar and high-top tables along the back wall. LED lights speckle the dim room in pink, blue, and green, enough to make the stage behind the bar glow. Poles reach from the raised platform into the ceiling, a pillar of the performances to come. Only a handful of customers joined me there, far outnumbered by the dancers who had come to work that day. Most of the dancers sit at a table in the back of the club, faces buried in their phones while a couple dance near the bar. The money isn’t what it used to be, one woman tells me. In the cancelled 2013 reality TV show “Ladies of Charm City,” award-winning stylist and former dancer Elicia Moore recounted that she used to make $1,200 a night working on The Block. Over 13 years later, dancers say high-earning nights trend closer to $500 or $600.
Though she’s learned not to rely on nightlife money for income, Dee tells me that discrimination based on appearance caused her to leave several clubs before settling in at Norma Jean’s and Lust.
Though she’s learned not to rely on nightlife money for income, Dee tells me that discrimination based on appearance caused her to leave several clubs before settling in at Norma Jean’s and Lust. These clubs have a reputation for being welcoming to all body types, the thicker and taller girls especially. Often, adult entertainment venues can be riddled with misogynoir, fatphobia, and colorism from employers and customers alike. In a business based on desirability, the way Black women’s bodies are sexualized comes not only with a mental and emotional cost, but a blow to girls’ wallets. Dee doesn’t talk about the way this might have been painful. I only hear it in the quiet breath she takes before telling me the way dancing the clubs made her tough. “Lookswise, they don’t really like thick, tall girls,” she says. ”I’m still human. Like your granny or your mom. It’s annoying.”
Beyond flare-ups of police aggression, violence, or other nuisances Dee calls “the bullshit,” The Block is a community that takes care of itself and knows how to keep each other safe. As the rest of Baltimore’s downtown aspires to transform into a developer’s wet dream, Dee is confident that this part of the city will remain the same. For her though, things are changing — the goals she’s most focused on are her degree to be a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist and building her brand as an online content creator. There isn’t much energy left for dancing anymore, and the tips are barely worth her time.
As the rest of Baltimore’s downtown aspires to transform into a developer’s wet dream, Dee is confident that this part of the city will remain the same.
With her own retirement on the horizon, Dee hopes that the young girls coming into this line of work continue to invest in themselves and build the unshakeable sense of self that helped her to succeed. “Don’t give a flying fuck about what nobody else thinks. Don’t change yourself.”