[For example, if you watch "US open swing dance championships" video, you can see some of the "styles of the era" from 1983 up until 2001. (wonder if the video is still available somewhere?)]
Once upon a time the trend was agile, almost jive-like dance. There were dances with country or shag influence. Straight-up posture and clean dance was dominant for some time. Then ballroom-influenced, polished and slick dance came along. etc.etc. There has been a lot of varieties in the dance.
Now in 2010's, contemporary social and contest WCS include body rolls, body isolation, nonlinear-looking slot shape, syncopated steps, tweak in handling of the rhythm and step timing,....it has evolved to make the look of dance more fun, playful, and interpretative than tight-ass display of clean basics.
[I'm not saying it's good or bad. A trend is a trend, a change is a change. Whether the dance looks good or not is still very much depending on the dancers.]
This past weekend, the OKC swing dance club invited Stephen White from FL for a weekend of workshop and dance. (4/21-22/2018)
The workshops and party were great success, attracting a good size crowd from OKC, Dallas, Tulsa, Stillwater, Wichita, Little rock, Kansas City, Fayetteville, etc. If you measure an instructor with his/her ability to attract people and raise money, he was great at it. We had a big party on Saturday.
There was a workshop on Sunday (4/22/18), which is supposed to be for advanced/instructor dancers with invitation only (Thank you for invite, Ben Clemons).
The workshop was about "messing up your WCS", fun way to introduce playfulness and improvisational motions to your WCS.
The instructor Stephen White himself dances the playful style. He was good at teaching it.
We have seen intermediate WCS dancers whose body is always "dancing". In ballroom world, it is called overactive frame and is shunned. I personally don't like it, because it is monotonous and boring to watch soon.
But the good playfulness is a display of freedom. It is opposite of monotonous and patterned. The somewhat unpredictable moves just start on the go, on the moment.
The method he was using was to introduce responsiveness to little "happening" during the dance and dance it, while (ideally) making it look good.
It takes some body intelligence. (In my summary, not Stephen's), particularly important traits are physical flexibility for body isolation, open mindedness to adapt to mess-up and to recover, and sensitivity to the motions of yourself and your partner.
Certainly it is a material for advanced/instructors. It was interesting, and fun.
I recommend his workshop.
[Party crowd]
