J. Ben-Hur once grabs American with both hands in dance (10)
I believe the answer is:
charleston
'dance' is the definition.
(I know that Charleston is a more specific form of the action dance)
'j ben-hur once grabs american with both hands' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'american' could be 'a' (common abbreviation - e.g. in organisation names) and 'a' is found in the answer.
'hands' could be 'rl' (abbreviations for left and right) and 'rl' is present in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'in' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for charleston that I've seen before include "Nineteen twenties dance" , "Lively 1920s' dance" , "American port" , "Town of South Carolina which gave its name to a 1920s dance craze" , "Dance making" .)