Jane Austen fans honor 250 years since her birth with grand costumed balls and dancing

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LONDON (AP) — Ellie Potts goes dancing with her friends most weeks. They don’t put on the latest Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran, though — they much prefer English country dances that were popular more than 200 years ago.

As the music starts, about two dozen men and women curtsy and bow, extend a gloved hand to their partner, before dancing in circles or skipping in elaborate patterns around each other.

Like many of her fellow Hampshire Regency Dancers, Potts is a devotee of Jane Austen and all things from the Regency period. Not only have they studied the books and watched all the screen adaptations — they also research the music, make their own period dresses, and immerse themselves in dances Austen and her characters would have enjoyed in centuries past.

“I’ve been interested in Jane Austen since I was about 8 or 9,” said Potts, 25. “I mainly joined (the dance group) so I can have balls and things to go to in my costumes, but I really got into it. I’ve been surprised how much I enjoy the dancing.”

There’s no shortage of grand costumed balls and historical dancing this year, which marks the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth. This weekend, thousands of fans who call themselves “Janeites” are descending on the city of Bath for a 10-day festival celebrating the beloved author of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility.”

The highlight is a Regency costumed promenade on Saturday, where some 2,000 people in their finest bonnets, bows and costumes will parade through the streets of Bath. Organizers say the extravaganza holds the Guinness World Record for the “largest gathering of people dressed in Regency costumes.”

Bonny Wise, from Indiana, is attending her sixth Jane Austen festival in Bath. This time she’s bringing four period dresses she made, and will lead a tour group of 25 Austen enthusiasts from all over the United States.

“I started planning a tour four years ago, when I realized this was a big year for Jane,” said Wise, 69. She credited the 1995 adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility” with sparking her obsession.

“That movie just opened up a whole new world for me,” she said. “You start with the books, the movies, then you start getting into the hats, the tea, the manners … one thing just led to another.”

Wise said she loves the wit, humor and social observations in Austen’s books. She also finds the author’s own life story inspiring.

“I admire Jane and what she managed as a woman in that era, her perseverance and her process of becoming an author,” she said.

The Jane Austen Society of North America, the world’s largest organization devoted to the author, says it has seen a recent influx of younger fans, though most of its members — 5,000 to date — skew older.

“We’re growing all the time because Jane Austen is timeless,” said Mary Mintz, the group’s president. “We have members from Japan, India. They come from every continent except Antarctica.”

Many festival-goers will be making a pilgrimage to Steventon, the small village in rural Hampshire, southern England, where Austen was born in 1775.

The author lived in Bath, a fashionable spa town in the 18th and 19th centuries, for five years. Two of her novels, “Persuasion” and “Northanger Abbey,” feature scenes set in the World Heritage city.

Bath is also the filming location for parts of “Bridgerton,” Netflix’s wildly popular modern take on period drama based loosely on the Regency period, the decade when the future King George IV stood in as prince regent because his father was deemed unfit to rule due to mental illness.

Thanks to the show, Austen and Regency style — think romantic flowing gowns, elegant ballrooms and high society soirees — have become trendy for a new generation.

“I think Jane Austen is on the rise,” Potts said. “She’s definitely become more popular since ‘Bridgerton’.”

In a church hall in Winchester, a few streets away from where Austen was buried, the Hampshire Regency Dancers gather weekly to practice for the many performances they’re staging this year in honor of the author.

The group selects dances that appear in screen adaptations of Austen’s novels, and members go to painstaking detail to ensure their costumes, down to the buttons and stitching, are authentic looking.

“We go to a lot of trouble to get things as close to the original as possible,” said Chris Oswald, a retired lawyer who now chairs the group. “For me it’s about getting a better understanding of what life was like then, and in the process of doing that getting a better understanding of Jane Austen herself.”

Oswald is passionate about his group’s showcases in Hampshire, or what he jokingly calls “Jane Austen land.”

“People get quite touched because they are walking where Jane Austen actually walked. They dance in a room that Jane Austen danced in,” he said. “For people who are very into Jane Austen, that’s extremely special.”

Many “Janeites” say they get huge enjoyment in making Austen's words and imageries come to life in a community of like-minded people.

Lisa Timbs, a pianist who researches the music in Austen’s life and performs it on an antique pianoforte, puts it succinctly: She and her Regency friends are "stepping back in time together.”

“I think it’s an escape for a lot of people,” Timbs added. “Perhaps it's to escape the speed, noise and abrasiveness of the era in which we find ourselves, and a longing to return to the elegance and indulgent pleasures of what was really a very fleeting period in history.”