Dear Dance Community,

We (the organizing committee) met this past week to review your responses to our survey about resuming dancing and to consider next steps. Your responses were largely positive, and enough of you indicated that you would like to return to in-person dancing (subject to Covid protocols/cautions) that we decided to go ahead with working out the details of resuming dancing. The biggest “detail” at this time is finding a venue, since the Williamstown Preschool will not not be available to us until some time in the fall due to construction.

As some of you may know, contradancing is starting to appear on the calendar in Greenfield, Worcester, and Lenox (click links for details). Organizing committees like ours are meeting across the region to make decisions about starting dancing again. That said, Covid continues to bedevil. It is likely we will adopt a policy, similar to that used by the Greenfield Guiding Star Grange, of canceling our dances any time Berkshire County falls in the CDC Community Level “High” category.

Here are the survey results:

Indoor dance: Pre-registration with proof of vaccination required. Masks required for both dancers and performers.

• We would come! 26
• I’m not sure 4
• We would not come 6

Outdoor dance: On lawn with caller and open band. Masks required for dancers.

• We would come! 28
• I’m not sure 5
• We would not come 3

Outdoor concert: Seating available, masks optional. Informal (unprompted) dancing on lawn in family groups.

• We would come! 22
• I’m not sure 9
• We would not come 5

We are currently investigating possible venues for both indoor and outdoor dancing and will meet again on May 18th to review. We will keep you posted!

If you would like to help us make the decisions and do the work of restarting dancing, do please contact Pat (413-458-9273).

– Your North Berkshire Community Dance organizing committee: