Swing vs West Coast Swing (WCS) vs “East Coast Swing”?
First of all, sigh, there is no such thing as “East Coast Swing” and never was. In reality, there is Swing, formerly called Jitterbug and danced everywhere in America (never just on the east coast) by millions of people. And there is an old niche variant of Swing created in California in the 1940s and still danced by a small number of devotees, that was originally called “Western Swing” and is now called “West Coast Swing” (WCS). Both started as simplified derivatives of Lindy Hop. Both have elaborated themselves over the years, with WCS going much farther along the elaboration route. The original technical difference between dancing Swing and WCS stemmed from one of the oddities of old style Lindy Hop, which was the parent of them both. Old style Lindy Hop originally developed by glomming together everything that worked with the music. In it, sometimes the lady did a Rock-Step (Backward-Forward) when one move ended and another began, and sometimes she walked Forward-Forward instead. W
