Responding for NEFFA's Thursday Night Contra Dance in Concord Massachusetts 1.  Do any of you have specific cancellation policies? Yes 2.  Under what circumstances would you cancel a dance?  How do you go about deciding whether or not to cancel? When our dance was in Cambridge, our policy was that we would cancel if there was a snow emergency declared by the city. This was objective, but a little ambiguous, as the city sometimes declared an emergency starting at "11pm" or "9pm".  In many cases, conditions were awful, but the city was slow to declare.  Now, our policy is to cancel if the committee feels that traveling to the dance would be unusually hazardous. If the talent can't make it due to lousy weather out of town, we may run the dance with local performers (we have a wealth of excellent local talent to draw from in this circumstance). 3.  What happens if you cancel a dance?  (Do you still pay the band/caller/sound provider the guarantee, if you have one?)  If we cancel, we pay the guarantee to the performers. We figure that the performers tend to need the money, and they are not responsible for the cancellation. As I often do the sound, I would not take pay for a cancellation.  Yes, this could be a financial hit, but maintenance of goodwill with performers is important to us. The hall doesn't charge us if we cancel. 4.  How do you get out the word to dancers? Webpage. Facebook page. Facebook message to "attendees". Email list. Outgoing telephone message. Basically, everything we can. If we can swing it, we'll get a local to put a poster on the door.