Dressing in fancy clothes and dancing at Jane Austen-style balls looks a lot like LARPing. LARPing (Live Action Role-Playing, where people dress in medieval clothing and stage mythical battles with homemade armour) has long been mocked by those less secure in themselves but Danceweavers, a Toronto-based organization, has been hosting an increasing amount of these Jane Austen Dancing events and they’ve been booked solid.

Danceweavers founder Karen Millyard has dedicated her life to these reconstructions of historical England through events like Masquerade balls, Georgian breakfasts, and English country dance lessons. English country dancing is partner dancing, but within a group. It is the predecessor to square dancing, where a caller calls out the next move to the group. It involves formulating a series of patterns, through movements called ‘figures’, on the dance floor. The dancing was recently popularized by the BBC mid-90’s series of Pride and Prejudice.

Millyard has a dance background. She studied performing arts and English literature in university, and was always fascinated by 19^th Century history. Not ‘historical fiction’ as told by modern authors, but the journals and newspapers and original novels of the time.

“I find that the most rich way to approach history is by listening to voices of the people that lived it. And when you read the diary of Samuel Pepys, who describes living in London during the great Plague in the 1660’s; hearing the carts going by in the streets, seeing the crosses painted on the doors where people were dying, and seeing the bodies being carted out of the city everyday.” Millyard feels that the most compelling stories are personal accounts by ordinary people living their daily lives.

Her personal interest in researching these histories led her to the discovery of English country dancing, and the balls where they would be performed at. She asserts that this type of educational immersion will help people “understand who we are and how our society emerged, and how we evolved.”

 “Of course, there are the people that come to the balls because they want to dress up, and live the Lizzie and Darcy fantasy,” says Millyard. But a lot are just genuinely interested in the history of the time. There are a lot of “teenagers and twenty-somethings that are completely into this, they are historical re-enactors. They have fantastic outfits. There were a couple of young men at the 12^th night event, in embroidered velvet coats and breeches.” For the most part, they are educated, middle-class people with an interest in the history of the Regency era. The order, balance, symmetry and completion of the pattern dance has a strong appeal to computer programmers, in particular.

Millyard doesn’t find it shocking that a generation raised on texting and Twitter views these archaic notions as being ‘new’ again. Knitting, croquet, weaving, letterpress and other pastimes of the olden days have experienced a renaissance. “It explores a time where people actually did things with their hands. People wrote letters using pen and ink. I think that has a whole fresh appeal today. It has a new kind of novelty. And it’s not seen necessarily as a kind of conservative, knee-jerk thing against everything new; it’s actually seen as new.”

Regency-era England was not defined by the stuffy, conservative mores of the Victorian era, where women were to be asexual and repression was endemic. Quite the contrary, it was an era much like our own, experiencing a marked degree of technological change. It was also marked by “decadence, obsession with good times, excitement and thrills. Novelty. There was a great deal of political upheaval. They were obsessed with sex.”

Over a decade ago, Millyard was satisfied with her job working as an editor at a publishing company.  Then came the blindside: late stage cancer at the age of 35. She would have to begin treatment the day after she was diagnosed. Weakened by bone marrow transplants and unable to work, she was forced to re-evaluate her life. “I realized I just didn’t really want to go back, even if I could, I just didn’t really want to go on with what I had been doing. I wanted to do my own creative projects.” Her life completely changed when she discovered English country dancing. She was captivated by the beauty of the music, the social interaction, and the exquisite patterns of the dancing.

The balls of the Regency period would attract people from all levels of society. While many were accessible public dances, some exclusive events demanded the modern day equivalent of a $100 cover charge. Everyone danced, or at least were present, at the dances. She wants to bring that social interaction back.

“I think we’ve really lost our sense of dancing and music as part of our birthright. Everybody can dance. And we have the right to reclaim that. The best part is seeing the looks on people’s faces. The smile will start right away and it just won’t stop. People are happy in that space, and that I can be partly responsible for that is the greatest joy I can have.”

On Monday, January 21st, a Four-lesson Jane Austen Dancers beginners’ course starts. 6:00-7:30 p.m. at St. Barnabas Anglican Church. Visit here for more information.

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Tiffy Thompson is a writer and illustrator for the Toronto Standard.  Follow her on Twitter at @tiffyjthompson. 

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