TORONTO - Jane Wieczorek, 20, describes her passion for Jane Austen as "a lifelong thing."
Little wonder: Her name is inspired by both her mother's affection for Austen and for Jane Bennet, the eldest sister in the central family of "Pride and Prejudice"; she's watched the 1995 BBC adaptation every year since it came out; she studies English at the University of Guelph.
So when she stumbled across Toronto's Jane Austen Dancing three years ago, a group that performs the English country dances of the time and hosts balls festooned in Regency regalia, it's perhaps no surprise that Wieczorek fell deeply in love, as if with the book's roguish Mr. Darcy himself.
"When I saw the flyers, I just thought: 'This is a dream come true,'" she said. "And I think a lot of people feel that way — it's just so magical."
It's unlikely this is what Austen envisioned when she wrote, "To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love." But that's what exists now: worldwide communities of "Jane-ites" celebrating the author, enjoying another surge of growth as "Pride and Prejudice" turns 200, featuring members united not by age, but a sense of romance that they feel no longer exists.
"I don't go clubbing, I do English country dance," said Wieczorek.
The group, started five years ago by Karen Millyard, has blossomed from the low teens to more than 100, largely by word of mouth. "It's this completely delightful, and in a sense uncomplicated, experience," said Millyard, 50. "There's nothing salacious about it — it's flirting as it should be."
A dancer with a background in ballet and modern jazz, Millyard's life was waylaid by a diagnosis of acute leukemia in 1998, and a bone-marrow transplant left her physically and emotionally frail. As she recovered, a friend suggested English country dancing on a lark — and she "just fell off the cliff."
"I was looking for a way to re-begin my life after my illness, and it was like, 'oh, this is it. This is my new life.' It just made me happy."
Millyard, who also runs the York Regency Society for those interested in delving deeply into Regency history, said Austen has endured because she represents a galvanizing vehicle for various interests — from the whimsy relished by Wieczorek to dance fans to history buffs like herself.
"I don't want people to have a purely romantic notion of it… There were very elaborate, complicated social codes," she said.
"(Austen) was a shortcut. I wanted to bring the history to the wider attention of the community, and that was the easiest way to do it."
This Friday through Sunday, the York Regency Society is hosting the second annual Weekend With Jane Austen, an immersive crash-course in the Regency period, from dance to food to quill-writing.
Last year's event featured more than 60 guests from as far away as Nova Scotia and Chicago, and Millyard expects to surpass that number this year.
"This is a pretty rabid subculture, and word is just spreading," she said.
Zakota Nesbit has also caught the bug. He was swept up by the romance of English country dancing at just 14, and though he has still never read an Austen novel, he's now a veteran of the circuit at 18.
"When I got there, I felt like I was stepping back in time. There were moments in the evening where I was literally stunned."
"I was actually really surprised that there were other young people involved in it," he said. "A lot of the time, high school is a segregated community, and anyone who is into this stuff can be ostracized. To have a welcoming group that's our age that approves of us makes it feel that much more allowable in the eyes of our peers."
Nesbit now participates in swing dancing and other historical re-enactments, and is writing a historical book series, fuelled in part by his experiences.
"It does require a bit of guff and courage, for both girls and guys," he said. "You're dancing with everyone, and it's almost like a family."
The Austen community has spread even to French-speaking Montreal.
Michel Landry, 67, has been dancing internationally since he was 17, and was teaching English country dance with his wife Arduina Alonzo when, 10 years ago, they were asked to run a class for a meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America. Since then, they've read all her books in French and English, visited such Austen hotspots as Bath and Winchester in England, and with Austen as their own teaching shortcut, they host their own balls in addition to monthly dance classes.
"I know (Austen) didn't write French, but the English and French, they were all sharing the same things. Dances were crossing the Channel," said Alonzo.
Landry believes the author's legacy has endured in part as a response to a virtual society seeking simpler, more communal times.
"When people go to a discotheque, they dance alone, they don't dance with others," he said. "People are alone, they work alone, in front of their computer screens. But people enjoy the pleasure of dancing with others."
Added Alonzo: "They can forget, when they come to a ball, usual 21st-century life."
