Ralph Page

I am on the roster of the New Hampshire Humanities Council doing a lecture as listed below. Last night we carried on in Stoddard in the very hall where Ralph Page called his first dance. Dr. Charley Faulkner and his wife Charlotte were there. They used to come to my dances in Nelson way back in the day when they were courting. Their favorite dance was The Money Musk. They knew better than to ask me to do it last night, but Jacqueline noted that there was another couple in the hall who knew the dance. We had a recording of Page calling that dance so Jacqueline and I joined the other two and we did the Money Musk a few times through. What fun. Music History and Appreciation Contra Dancing In New Hampshire: Then and Now Since the late 1600s, the lively tradition of contra dancing has kept people of all ages swinging and sashaying in barns, town halls, and schools around the state. Contra dancing came to New Hampshire by way of the English colonists and remains popular in many communities, particularly in the Monadnock Region. Presenter Dudley Laufman brings this tradition to life with stories, poems and recordings of callers, musicians, and dancers, past and present. Live music, always integral to this dance form, will be played on the fiddle and melodeon. Dudley Laufman Dudley & Jacqueline Laufman PO Box 61, 322 Shaker Rd Canterbury, NH 03224 www.laufman.org 603-783-4719 jdlaufman(a)comcast.net Education book & CD at www.humankinetics.com Performance Calendar at www.laufman.org