As we get into summer and covid levels continue to fall, a lot of contra dances are rethinking their approaches to masking. At this point contra dances are the only places I go that require masks, though they're also the closest I get to large numbers of people.
Prompted by an initial search Harris shared with me, I used TryContra to get a list of all 39 New England dances and manually checked their mask rules. I found a bit under half of dances require them (sheet):
| State | Required | Optional | Percentage Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| MA | 12 | 3 | 80% |
| ME | 0 | 11 | 0% |
| CT | 0 | 5 | 0% |
| NH | 1 | 3 | 25% |
| VT | 2 | 1 | 67% |
| RI | 0 | 1 | 0% |
| Total | 15 | 24 | 38% |