Jacqueline & Dudley Laufman
Music and Calling from the Dean of New England Contradancing
Excerpts from Fiddler Magazine, Fall 2002 article
Dudley Laufman's "Calling": Everybody Dance by Janet Joyce-Farrar
It was 1945 and Dudley had just turned fifteen when he traveled from Arlington, Massachusetts, to begin work on the Mistwold Dairy Farm in Fremont, New Hampshire. On an early fall Sunday the family invited several of their relatives and neighbors over for a corn roast. After lunch the group sang hymns and then the farmer pulled out his fiddle. His wife sat down at the piano. Soon music and dancing filled the house and lasted until late that night. ...To keep the memories and images of such good times and close community alive would become a driving force of this romantic young man. Thus Dudley Laufman began a fifty-five-year agenda to perpetuate authentic New England contra dance figures and tunes so that others could feel the same resonance, the same sense of community that he still feels.As Jim Collins said in his article in the December 1995 edition of Yankee Magazine, "He took the torch of a dying oral tradition from the hands of a few old-timers and fired up an entire generation of young people. He took contra dancing out of the history books and made it part of a living lifestyle." By the late 1970s, Dudley became the caller in New England. "Dudley Dances" developed a following that cut across socioeconomic groups throughout the state. The movement of renewed interest in contra and square dancing was firmly established.
David Millstone is a teacher, caller, leader of the band Northern Spy, and producer of the film Paid to Eat Ice Cream. He explains: "In the same way that his mentor, Ralph Page, popularized contra dances for a previous generation, Dudley Laufman was the single individual most responsible for the resurgence of contra dance in the years that followed. Dudley is not just another caller; he is one of a rare breed, a contemporary Dancing Master, an authority on dancing."
Since 1986, Dudley and Jacqueline have been playing dances as Two Fiddles. They occasionally combine the earthy sound of their playing with percussion instruments or clogging that accompanies Dudley’s calling of figures for jigs and reels (including Virginia), circle and contra dances and dances from the colonial period to the present....A major component of Dudley's success is that he understands that simpler dances are legitimate dances in their own right that are fun for everyone and don't need to be just a prelude to learning intricate contras. Dudley has always been emphatic declaring that dancing is for relaxing and should not resemble work....Jacqueline enthusiastically shares Dudley’s vision that puts emphasis on the fact that even inexperienced dancers can join in and have fun.
...They average 300 engagements a year and are often booked the better part of a year in advance. Keeping the authentic ambience alive, they play in barns, private homes, town halls, grange halls, church basements and parish halls. They play for school classes and programs, fairs, festivals, weddings, camps, elder hostels and regional folk festivals. Two Fiddles has toured widely throughout the northeast United States and into Canada. They also have been hired in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Kansas and Minnesota. They were selected to represent traditional dancing at the 1999 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.