LEWISTON  — The Lewiston Family Contradance series continues Saturday, Dec. 3, at the Saint Mary’s Nutrition Center, 208 Bates St. beginning at 6:30.  Special guest callers and musicians will be Dudley and Jacqueline Laufman of Canterbury, N.H.  Dance organizer and local fiddler and teacher Greg Boardman counts Laufman as “one of my most important mentors, and a huge influence on the contradance scene in Maine and way, way beyond.”

 Since 1986, Jacqueline and Dudley Laufman have been playing for dances as Two Fiddles. Dudley, who has been playing and calling dances for over 50 years, has been the leader of the Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra, the first dance band to make an LP recording, in 1972, of the New  England jigs and reels most often used for dancing.

 As dance fiddlers, Jacqueline and Dudley have an earthy sound that combines with the beating of their feet as they call out the figures for old-time New Hampshire barn and square dances. They are self-taught and play by ear, having learned by the oral tradition. They continue this tradition through their own students and apprentices.

Two Fiddles has toured widely throughout the northeast as well as the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Hawaii, Quebec, Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota. The kinds of dances they do are Virginia reels, circle dances, square and contradances, and dances from the colonial period to the present. Everyone is able to join in the dances; no experience needed.

They play in barns, private homes, town halls, schools, fairs, festivals, weddings, camps, Elderhostel programs, among others venues. They average about 200 engagements per year and are often booked months in advance.

Most of their work is in New Hampshire, but they also travel to other parts of New England, the U.S. and Canada. They were selected to represent traditional dancing at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival 1999 in Washington, DC.

Dudley, 85, began calling dances in 1948.  Jacqueline, 63, began playing fiddle in 1986. They live on the edge of the woods in a little house they built themselves. In 2016 they produced another Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra recording with 16 musicians, including Lewiston’s Greg Boardman, for another album of that full, rich Canterbury sound: Welcome Here Again.

Attendees are invited to dance or just listen, as the Laufmans will be accompanied by many younger and older area musicians, who are welcome to play with the band as they are able.  

A freewill offering will be requested at the door.  For more information call 344-3106.