Help: Popular swing dance styles?

[Cousin Hepcat]

What are the currently most popular variations of swing dance styles (both west coast and east coast), which are danced to big band swing music?

If you went to any "Retro-30s-40s swing dance", what styles would any guy there be expected to know in order to "hold his own"?

East Coast & West Coast Swing?
Lindy Hop?
Jitterbug?
Balboa?

Here's a web list, with descriptions of the variations (but doesn't quite say which are still popular):
http://www.swingcraze.com/ussds/swing_dance_styles.html

Looking to take some lessons, but looks like theres about a hundred variations, not sure where to start...

thanks

 

[MrBern]

long sloppy answer

Well, in NYC area, most of the dances start w/ a little lesson. Usually a simple basic EastCoastswing sequence. Its actually a good icebreaker for the room as you may be asked to switch partners throughout the lesson. The footwork can be very simple, tho it will progress. Sometimes they throw in a little charleston kick step to spice things up.
WestCoast is really handy to dance in confined spaces, tho I've seen classes often dwell on rythmn&blues music. Frankly, I'm more into Bigband, but the moves are very useful. Its an evolution of learnign to dance in a bar, you dance in a narrow slot so as not to slam into other dancers & drinkers.
Lindy...I love watching it. Its an awful lot of fast dancingfor a beginner, but everyone has diff ability. Its prob best to take a few lessons before hitting the clubs.
Balboa...thats more for the rollicking 20s music, so perhaps less useful to you, initially.
I think jitterbug & bop are more for fast 50s songs. All the variants of Lindyhop are really more or less dependent on the style of music.

have fun!

 

[ShanghaiJack]

Styles

I always preferred double time East Coast style
personally. It's fun, not as memory bogging, and
it looks fantastic.

 

[The Wingnut]

East coast swing is easy to learn, easy to teach, fairly popular and fun. Lindy hop (there are two styles, Savoy and Smooth / Hollywood) is far more technical and difficult, but is a BLAST once you've got it. Like Mr. Bern says, it's fun to watch, too.