ORONO – The University of Maine’s Franco-American Center and York Dining Commons are teaming up to present a Mardi Gras celebration featuring dinner and music.

The event, slated for 4:30 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 12, at York Dining Commons, helps preserve an important Franco-American tradition, according to Lisa Desjardins Michaud, coordinator of communications for the Franco-American Center. It is open to students as well as the public.

“The Mardi Gras dinner at York Commons helps to create the awareness that Mardi Gras is celebrated here in Maine,” she said. “It creates French tradition awareness here on campus and in the community. It’s important to keep the traditions alive because our children are unaware of them and they may be lost otherwise.”

Mardi Gras means “Fat Tuesday” in French and is a day of feasting and celebration before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the season of Lent, the traditional Catholic period of abstinence and fasting. Mardi Gras is celebrated 47 days before Easter.

The Mardi Gras menu will include such traditional Franco-American dishes as chicken stew with dumplings, salmon pie, tourtiere, roast beef, baked beans, sweet potato casserole and corton.

Dinner music will be provided by Joel Morneault, who studied at the Boston Conservatory of Music after 31 years as a band and choral director in public schools in Bucksport, Falmouth, Fort Kent and Edmundston, New Brunswick.

Seating times are from 4:30 to 5:45 p.m. and 5:45 to 7 p.m. Tickets are limited and reservations must be made by Feb. 1. Tickets are $10.23 for adults, $4.87 for students. For reservations, call Susan Little, York Dining Commons dining service manager, at 581-4959.