Paul Jones

[DanceMentor]

After reading this post (http://www.dance-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1776), I was inspired to find out more about this dance. I happened to luck upon an old book that told more about it, and I wanted to share it with you. I spent $20 for the book, so I hope you will appreciate the what I went through to bring you this.

According to Ballroom Dancing by Alex Moore (Sixth Edition):

The MC or Leader of the band announces "Paul Jones" and the babd then plays a bright tune such as "Life on the Ocean Wave" or "Here we come gathering nuts in May". The dancers then form two large circles, the men on the inside and facing outwards, and the ladies on the outside and facing inwards, that is, towards the men.

With hands joined the two circles move to the right so that they are moving in opposite directions. When the music stops the man claims the lady directly in front of him and dances. The band should pause for a few seconds to permit the men to take their partners and then play a Waltz, Quickstep, Foxtrot, etc., or occasionally an "Old Time" dance. After playing about one chorus of music, the band stops, the circle is formed as before, and continued as described above.

It is sometimes advisable for the bad to commence by playing a Waltz or
Quickstep and then when all the dancers are on the floor to announce a Paul Jones and immediately break into the Call tune. This insures that all couples will take part."

[cl5814]

One of the dance studios that i frequent does the Paul(a) Jones every dance night. Didn't know that it was actually documented in the book.

[Chris Stratton]

What's really worth $20 about that book is the description of the forward and backward walking actions. The figure descriptions are nice, too - though dated they are very similar to the ISTD technique book, since they share a common original author.

[DanceMentor]

Someone sent this:


Found your site when I looked up "Paul Jones" dance. You may wish to know that there is a scene in The Great Ziegfeld that shows the dance in action. It's about 2 hours and 15 minutes into the film.

[ChaChaMama]

Our studio does a Paul Jones mixer every Friday. There are some variations on the theme for mixing up the partners--sometimes we get into a circle man-woman-man-woman, then the men go right and the women go left Virginia Reel style until the whistle blows--but the ladies inside, men outside is always part of the mix.

LOL on Paula Jones. My partner likes to call it that too. He seems to equate mixers with certain accusations of sexual hijinks during the Clinton administration...even though our studio is not at all like that!

[bjp22tango]

The studio in Maryland that I first learned at also did Paul Jones mixers during each dance party.

It is more useful if there is a closely even number of dancers. If leaders or followers are unbalanced it can be pretty disconcerting to those left out.