Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Aug 3

Dudley Laufman Dies at 95, Revived New England Contra Dancing for 16,000 at Newport

Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Aug 3

Dudley Laufman Dies at 95, Revived New England Contra Dancing for 16,000 at Newport

Q: What secret ingredient did Dudley Laufman add to a dying dance form that captivated 16,000 fans at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival?

The “secret ingredient” was Dudley Laufman’s looser, more welcoming, participatory spirit. Contra dancing had been close to disappearing when Laufman began calling in the late 1940s and 1950s. What set him apart was not a new dance form but the way he reshaped its atmosphere. He made a once more rigid tradition feel open, lively and accessible to newcomers, while still grounded in New England folk practice. That helped the dance appeal both to longtime rural communities and to younger back-to-the-land and countercultural audiences. By 1965, that approach was powerful enough to carry to the Newport Folk Festival. Organizers asked Laufman to assemble a band and dancers, a collaboration that helped launch the Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra. In front of roughly 16,000 people, the group’s performance showed that contra dancing was not a museum piece but a living social tradition. So the key element Laufman added was inclusiveness paired with energy: he turned contra dancing from an endangered custom into a communal experience people wanted to join.

1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 3

July 13 marked the death of Dudley Laufman, the New Hampshire folk dance caller whose family said he died at 95 at the Canterbury cabin he built 67 years ago.
By the 1950s, contra dancing was close to extinct, but Laufman helped revive it in the 1960s and 1970s with a looser, more welcoming style that drew both rural traditionalists and counterculture newcomers.
A 1965 Newport Folk Festival appearance pushed that revival into public view when about 16,000 people watched Laufman and his musicians and dancers perform.
Best known for calling contra dances—directing paired lines of dancers over fiddle and accordion music—Laufman became a central figure in preserving a regional folk tradition with roots in late-18th-century America.

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The New York Times9d ago

Dudley Laufman, Folk Dance Caller Who Revived New England Contra, Dies at 95

What secret ingredient did Dudley Laufman add to a dying dance form that captivated 16,000 fans at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival?

How did a rural farmer's simple dance calls bridge the gap between traditionalists and the 1960s hippie counterculture?

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The New York Times9d ago

Dudley Laufman, Folk Dance Caller Who Revived New England Contra, Dies at 95

Dudley Laufman Dies at 95, Revived New England Contra Dancing for 16,000 at Newport

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