“Islands In The Stream” is an award winning piece of choreography by Karen Jones. It won the Linedancer Magazine Crystal Boot Award Dance of the year in 2000 and then in 2007 it won the dance of the Decade. It is danced all around the world and has stood the test of time as it is still danced in many clubs to this day.

The dance was initially written for Karen Jones dance club students for one of their social nights. Karen had chosen the music but could not find a dance suitable for her club as she had a mixture of improvers and intermediates and the dances she found were either too easy or too difficult.  After learning 4 dances and still not finding anything suitable she thought it might be quicker to write the dance as she knew exactly what she needed for the class.

After 45 minutes she had the dance written and an easier version for the improvers.  Who would of know and that point that this dance would have been a double Crystal Boot Award winning piece of choreography, or that it would have caused such a stir in the dance world.

In 1998 Karen hired an International choreographer to come to her home town and teach her students.  350 tickets were sold, as everyone was keen to see this favoured International choreographer.  A Sunday afternoon workshop was booked and the event was organised.  Unfortunately the Guest Choreographer remembered the event to be an evening event and when they realised that they had made a mistake they called Karen to say they would be 2 hours late.

This caused a dilemma as the hall was booked for 4 hours and the choreographer would not be here for at least 2 of those 4.  A decision had to be made whether the event should be cancelled and a refund given, or entertain everyone for 2 hours until the choreographer arrived.   Karen asked all her instructor friends if they would teach their latest choreography and said she would teach hers which was Islands in the stream.

So for the first time ever Karen had to teach an audience of 350 people and had no idea how her choreography would be received.  The instructors at the event took the dance back to their respective clubs and taught it to their students.  Gradually the dance started to be passed from club to club and a year later Linedancer Magazine published it in their magazine and by the February of 1999 it was nominated for dance of the year.  It had only been published a few months so it had not been seen by everyone.  It was however danced at the Awards evening and many instructors saw it and took it back as one of their “must teach” dances.

The next few months Linedancer magazine was inundated with calls about the timing and the start of the dance.  There were many confusions as to where the dance started and Karen even got a call from one instructor asking is she could change the timing for her club as they found the traditional Cha Cha Cha timing difficult for her dance to learn.

Islands in the stream stayed the dance popularity charts at No 1 position for 5 consecutive months as had three articles written about it by the Linedancer magazine to clarify the timing as they were getting around 50 calls a week.  So publishing the timing and clarifying the start meant that they would be able to get the message across to the readers and prevent their telephone line being jammed with calls about this issue.

In 1999 the nominations came round again and in February 2000 Karen Jones collected her award.

In 2004 Karen moved to Spain with her husband Barry and when she came back in December 2006 she found her dance had been nominated again but this time for Dance of the Decade. As she had been out of the dance scene for 2 years she had no idea what was going on. Her good friends Teresa Lawrence and Vera Fisher convinced her to come to the Crystal Boot Awards to get back into the swing of things.

The rest is history as they say as winning Dance of the Decade means the dance has managed to stay in the forefront of the dancers minds for many years and with 100′s of thousands of dances choreographed each year to have yours picked time and again has to be the best accolade of the year.

Karen has many letters from dancers and instructors about the pleasure the dance has given them.  There has even been a pop video where the dance was used to promote their cha cha rhythm music.

It has been turned into a partner dance and can been seen danced on youtube by various different people from all over the world and taught in many languages.

Karen then got many invites to teach all over the world and taught in many clubs around the UK, but only took up one international event.  This was an event Doug and Jackie Miranda ran.  It was a 3 week tour covering Las Vegas, San Bernardino, San Francisco and Hawaii.  Karen attended this event with 6 other club members and had an unforgettable time.