This idea of "led" versus "automatic" crossing is a problematic dichotomy that leads to a lot of misunderstaning in tango dancing, in my opinion.
I have seen couples at classes and practicas debating why the cross did not happen, with the woman telling the man to push her with his arm, or to twist his torso, or to do other (IMO) superfluous things. I have danced with some women who seem to refuse to cross unless I do something "extra" with my arm. I think that is because somewhere they heard "don't cross unless the man leads it." Then they think that "lead" means push with the arm or something. I guess people have different ideas of what "lead" means. In my view, if the man moves his body in a direction that takes the women into the crossing sequence, I would call that 'leading" the cross. He shouldn't need to do anything especially different with his arms or torso to guide the woman to crossing. The woman stays in front of the man. If she doesn't cross when he goes that way, the couple will feel that they are separating or going out of alignment. There should be no such thing as an "automatic" cross. "Automatic" would mean that the women just do a cross on their own as a memorized pattern. That's wrong. Women do not dance on their own. They dance with and in response to what the man is doing. If the man turns counter-clockwise and the woman walks around him, she will customarily walk with a crossing sequence, as has been described earlier. If the man walks on the outside right of the woman, she will customarily walk with a crossing sequence. If the man walks more in front of her, she will walk without crossing. If the man walks on her left in a typical closed embrace, she will _normally_ not cross. (As Jay just said, the asymmetry of the embrace works against the crossing sequence when walking on the woman's left.) These are conventions that women who know how to dance tango become accustomed to and internalize through experience. The man's body position and trajectory is what induces the woman's crossing sequence. If he stops moving, she will stop moving. If he changes direction, she will change direction. If he continues moving on a path to her cross, a woman (who knows how to dance tango and who has developed dance technique) will walk in a crossing sequence. ....... I remember sitting with a visiting teacher and watching a middle-aged Argentine couple dancing tango at a house party. The visiting teacher, commenting on how much he loved to watch people dance, pointed out to me that this coulple did not use the cross, and he asked me where they were from. The teacher said that he would bet that they are from outside Buenos Aires - that the crossing is not used so much in tango outside of Buenos Aires. We then asked the couple where they were from -- they had grown up and learned to dance in the interior, some place like Rosario, maybe (don't remember exactly). _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
