[Tango-L] leading cruzada

[Carol Shepherd]

Joe Grohens wrote:

> There should be no such thing as an "automatic" cross. 

Maybe not in TANGO®.

"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.
> 

Social dancing is full of small bits of automatic footwork.  Every 
dancer knows only what he or she learned and what's gleaned from dance 
experience.  Such rules include things like which steps follow which in 
a molinete/giro and how you handle a lead for a rock step turn (which 
has many names and I don't remember them right now).

Under the above blanket statement, you could just as easily say that a 
follow should never understand a circular body lead as a giro and commit 
to following it around using the giro footwork.  The fact is that many 
women (myself included) were taught at some point deliberately to 
automatically cross after two steps, unless prevented from doing so by 
the lead.  I don't do this anymore because it's not the style in our 
club, but when a lead doesn't lead the cross and then seems to be at a 
loss at the crossing point that I haven't crossed myself, I can 
accommodate.  I'm sure the men in our community have different 
preferences about crossing, but they all seem to have no problem dancing 
with either kind of follow on the social dance floor.

-- 
Carol Ruth Shepherd
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