DancerVax is a vaccine verification system that's purpose-built for partnered dance events. You upload your COVID vaccination record once, and once it has been reviewed and approved, you can use your record to attend events by participating organizations with vaccine requirements. Your record is individually examined by members of a board of certifiers selected from among the leadership of participating organizations. Then, when an organization uses your name and email (or a QR code you provide) to lookup your status, they only see whether you are approved to attend, not your full vaccination record. This helps to protect your privacy, it reduces your need to carry around a physical card, and it helps to make the process of vaccine verification smoother and more reliable so that we can all dance safely.
DancerVax is a volunteer effort among individuals involved in several swing dance organizations. It is independently organized, but it is staffed by volunteers from the organizations who use it. DancerVax and its volunteers are dedicated to ensuring a safe and healthy dance community.
The DancerVax application was built by Lee Tucker. Logo design was by Patrick Everson. The service and website are maintained by Lee, who is also the sole owner of the parent organization, DancerVax LLC.
You can see a list of currently participating organizations, as well as the current members of the DancerVax Board of Certifiers, here.
Once a dancer uploads their vaccination record, it is reviewed by a member of the DancerVax Board of Certifiers. If the record appears to be legitimate, then the upload is approved, and you will now be indicated as "Approved" to participate by any participating organization that looks up your record. This process looks much like the process that you would encounter at any event where the paper copy of your vaccination record is manually verified. The difference is that with DancerVax, you only have to provide your record once, and you can provide it electronically!
When a participating organization looks up your record, they don't actually have to review your full record. In fact, they don't even see it. All they see is whether you are approved to participate based on the rules for vaccination that they have selected. This helps to protect your privacy as a participant, and it makes the process of checking for vaccination at the door even easier.
We also recognize that, in the absence of state-run verification systems, no solution to vaccine verification is 100% foolproof. That is why we have constructed a Board of Certifiers from the leadership of several prominent dance organizations. These are the individuals who will review your uploaded vaccination card, and if there is a concern or a discrepancy, these are the individuals who will work as a group to resolve it.
It is important to the safety of everyone that the information provided by DancerVax can be trusted. That is why we have laid out detailed procedures for what to do in the event that a vaccination record is believed to be falsified. Full details are available in the Terms and Conditions and the Privacy Policy, including the steps taken to rectify any concerns about a vaccination record. But here is an overview:
If the Board of Certifiers determines that you have may have provided false information, we will first contact you about it and give you an opportunity to rectify the issue or address any concerns. Unless it is determined that you deliberately provided false information, we will also provide you with the opportunity to remove your account from DancerVax. However, if this does not successfully correct the issue, or if we determine that your falsification was deliberate, we will notify all DancerVax participating organizations that we believe you have submitted an illegitimate vaccination record. Your record will be updated so that you show up as "Unauthorized" to any organization that uses DancerVax to look up your vaccination record. Individual organizations are free to decide how this information impacts your eligibility to participate in their events. They may also elect to share our concerns about your vaccination record with other organizations in the community who do not make use of DancerVax.
One of the key principles of DancerVax is that every participating organization sets their own rules when it comes to vaccine requirements. Since some organizations allow individuals to participate who are medically or religiously exempt from vaccination, DancerVax allows users to upload documentation of these situations. As with vaccination cards, the only individuals who will see the information you upload are members of the Board of Certifiers. Dance organizations themselves see only whether you are "Approved" under their rules.
If you are indicating a medical exemption, we ask that you upload a photo of a signed and dated document that states "I certify that I am medically exempted from vaccination under the advisement of a medical professional." You do not need to disclose the specific medical condition that has led to your exemption, but we do request that you sign and date the document.
If you are indicating a religious exemption, we ask that you upload a photo of a signed and dated document that states "I certify that I am unvaccinated due to my genuinely held religious belief and membership in <name of religious organization>."
Remember, individual organizations and venues adopt their own criteria for community health measures, and so their policies around these types of exemptions vary. You may still be denied entry to dance events due to the medical fact of not being vaccinated, and DancerVax has no control over these decisions. If you're unsure of an organization's policies, please check their website or contact them directly.
DancerVax currently requires you to certify that you are fully vaccinated, and it reports to participating organizations that you are approved to participate in any event that occurs at least 14 days after your last dose. In the future, organizations may be able to make participation decisions based on how the length of time since your last vaccine dose. So, it's a good idea to keep DancerVax up to date with any changes to your vaccination record.
If you have already submitted your record to DancerVax and you then receive a booster dose, you can add an additional vaccination record to report the new dose. In the date field, report the date of your booster dose. Don't worry, in the 14 day period after your booster shot, you will still be approved to participate based on the information in your existing record.
If you are submitting your record to DancerVax for the first time after receiving a booster shot, then you should still enter in the date of your last dose in the date field. However, be sure to check the box indicating that your last dose was a booster. Otherwise, in the 14 days after your booster, participating organizations may be told that you are not yet eligible to participate.
We take your privacy very seriously, which is why we are committed to the security of your data. Here are some of the features that DancerVax has implemented to ensure your privacy:
For more details on the ways in which we protect your privacy, please see the DancerVax Privacy Policy.
DancerVax only allows participating organizations to find your record using an exact name and email lookup. So, it is important that the name on your account is the same one that you will be giving to the dance organizations whose events you attend.
We recognize that the name written on your vaccination records may not match the name that you publicly use. We also recognize that the name written on your vaccination record may be confidential, such as a prior name or dead name that you do not wish to dislose within the dance community. Our goal is always to conduct vaccine verification while minimizing the number of people who have to see your physical record. Except in cases of deliberate falsification or impersonation, we will not disclose the name on your vaccine card to participating organizations, nor any other elements of your full vaccination record. Only members of the Board of Certifiers have the ability to access your full vaccination record, and unless there is a question that requires follow-up or additional review, most vaccination records only need to be reviewed by a single person.
To help ensure a swift review of your record, and to ensure that the number of certifiers who review it is kept to a minimum, we encourage you to include a note with your vaccination record. A text field is provided for you to do this. Any notes that you include will be treated as part of your full vaccination record and will therefore be kept confidential. If we have any remaining questions about your record upon an initial review, we will contact you by email.
Step one is to fill out this form. You will also be asked to read and agree to the organization Terms and Conditions and our Privacy Policy. Make sure that you read and understand these documents!
Once that is complete, we will manually review and approve your application. This review process allows us to ensure that DancerVax is only being used by reputable dance organizations, and it allows us to scale up the service slowly.
Because different countries have different legal restrictions around the sharing and use of vaccination data, we cannot currently allow organizations based outside the U.S. to use DancerVax at this time.
However, if you are interested in adopting the DancerVax source code to run a similar site in your own country, this is available. Contact info@dancervax.org for more details.
We'd love to hear from you! Please email info@dancervax.org.