Dancing Queerly Community Guidelines

Dancing Queerly seeks to bring LGBTQ community members of all ages and experiences together through dance. In order to further this mission, we respectfully ask everyone who attends or participates  to read and abide by these guidelines.

The Basics

• Dancing Queerly audience members, participants, teachers and artists are expected to be respectful and welcoming to everyone, regardless of race, creed, nationality, disability status, sexual orientation, sex, gender or gender expression.
• All participants should behave in a manner that does not make other participants feel unsafe or threatened.
• Participants are expected to be responsible for their own behavior.

 Addressing Unsafe Behavior

• If someone's behavior is making you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, please ask them to stop or remove yourself from the situation.
• If the behavior or offensive language continues, please communicate this to a festival organizer (noted on their name tags) either in-person, or over email (dancingqueerlyboston@gmail.com)
• Participants who are unable or unwilling to respect these guidelines will be asked to leave.

Important Details

• Ask before engaging in physical contact. Some dancers are used to touching others or being touched in specific ways without giving or asking for consent each time. At Dancing Queerly, do not assume that everyone in a dance space has consented to touch. If contact is part of a dance form, teachers will include a clear system for communicating consent and non-consent.
• Be respectful of everyone’s identity, including self-identification, names, and pronouns. Do not assume someone’s pronoun based on their name or presentation. If it is relevant to the conversation (ie. you want to call someone by their name) and you are unsure of how to refer to someone, ask.  If you are flexible about what pronouns you use for yourself, it is perfectly fine to say that. Please respect that for others, specific pronouns may be important, and hearing someone be dismissive of pronouns in general can be hurtful.
• Any discussion about bodies  should be relevant, non-gendered, and non-judgemental. Body shaming (including discussions of gender presentation, body hair, clothing choices, and body shape) is not welcome in the space.
• Step Up, Step Back. Participants should be aware of how much space and time they may be taking up. If you notice that you have been speaking a lot during a group discussion, allow yourself to “step back” and let others “step up” to the mic. Step Up/Step Back is also a great way to encourage new or shy participants to make themselves heard.
• Workshop participants may be asked to sign a photo and/or video waiver so we can make a fabulous highlight reel of the festival - if you would prefer not to be recorded, you do not need to sign, and will be asked to wear a special name tag so our photographers and videographers know and can avoid filming or taking pictures of you.

Addition guidelines for Dance Curious, our LGBTQ only workshop, are here.