At home, Swing was heard at bond sale rallies and community concerts. There's even a little rivalry showing. East Coast Swing is more of a purer, faster, real Savoy Ballroom type of swing, while the West Coast Swing Style is a sultrier, slower variation of the Savoy Lindy Hop. The East Coast Swingers find West Coast overly sexual, while West Coast aficionados find New York's traditional Lindy as too wild. There is some bad blood flowing between the two styles because each fears losing dancers to the other side.
Clothing also seems to be an item.
Many of the older crowd show up in casual dress, but the younger cats look sharp in gabardine suits, shirt and tie, and the chicks in lace and crepe dresses, leaping and shimmying to tapes of wing-era classics. Swing offers a joyous alternative to a generation that came of age during the AIDS crisis, and a time when sexuality was hidden under grunge. This is a return to elegance, to touch dancing and to wearing your sexuality on your sleeve. Swing is definitely the thing. A great many Dance schools are reporting a surge in students learning the classic swing dance and it appears that Swing, the Lindy Hop born in Harlem 70 years ago, is here to stay.