That's quite some dance background Sofakat! Very impressive.
Mine is less so, ballet from 3, took up National, Tap and Jazz at around 7 (ballet teacher told my mother I'd never be the right shape for ballet, and that I needed to add more strings to my bow), kept on with Ballet for fun even though Tap was my strong point, quit everything at about 15, took up boys and smoking instead
Fast forward to my early 20s- I came across Lindy by accident about 15 years ago. After been dragged around the dance floor in an embarrassing fashion by some very kind leads I vowed I would never again experience that and started classes two days later. After a while I picked up the other vintage swing dancers I mentioned earlier, and went back to tap (rhythm tap is very useful and of course, related to all the other dances I'm interested in). 7 years ago I moved to a city with very little going on and had no choice but to suck it up and start helping to get a local scene going, including teaching (and learning to lead). Happily, that paid off and we now have around 100 people at our classes weekly.
I firmly believe that beginners deserve the best teachers (bad habits are so hard to break!) so since then I've made a point of studying with some of the best Swing dancers in the world - including Max. Now, at the ripe old age of 38 I've somehow agreed to compete at the European Swing Dance Championships 2015, with the all girl authentic Jazz troupe I helped to found this year. Argh! Wish me luck? Haha!
I find Hustle fascinating, in part, because we use it as an argument for why Lindy needs to be preserved, rather than progressed. Essentially, Lindy Hop plus 40 years of changes = Hustle. Or indeed, WCS. No need to create them again!
Carolina Shag is the anomaly here, I think - the dance remains the same in terms of moves and spirit, even though it's danced to non-period appropriate music. I presume this is due to the unique combination of small geographic spread and the fact that most CS dancers are also Westies, who will dance to pretty much any kind of music. This is all simply conjecture, of course!
One of the subjects I lost when posting earlier relates to that, kinda - in Moscow last year a Swing dance camp held a crossover Jack and Jill competition, where Swing dancers of disparate disciplines (never usually present on the same dance floor) were randomly assigned partners in a raffle and then played previously unheard songs, the first song was either fast Swing or Boogie Woogie and the second was something random. It resulted in some absolutely bonkers happenings.
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