To turn, turn will be our delight

[venta]

In any normal circumstance, saying "turn left" to someone is a useful, sensible instruction. At least, providing the person you're talking to is able to get their left, er, right.

Somehow, though, when dancing rapper this phrase loses any meaning.

I'm not quite sure what the problem is. I think it might be partly that the person being told to turn is required to turn on-the-spot rather than in a more usual left-turn sort of sense. It might be that being caught in the middle of a tangled whirl of metal is disorientating. Or it might just be that when someone is already confused, shouting "left! left!" at them is never really going to help.

We've tried various strategies to deal with this. Saying to someone "turn the easy way" doesn't help. In theory, it should. The "easy way" is either the "short way" if they know which way they want to end facing (ie turning 90 degrees instead of 270), or if their arms are twisted, it's the way that untwists them. Again, this sort of instruction tends to result in a rabbit-in-the-headlights sort of panic as someone tries to work out which way to go.

I suppose this is the sort of reaction seen in other cases, too, when someone is confused and is required to act quickly and correctly. Quite why the stricken dithering is the human body's best way of coping remains a bit of a mystery. We all seem to do it, though.

Quite a common way of explaining turns is to say something like "turn left shoulder back". This is the same way as "turn left", but gives you something a bit more definite to grasp hold of if you're feeling a bit bewildered. Move your left shoulder backwards. Now keep turning that way.

Sometimes, though, describing things via the surroundings work better. After a failure with some "turn outwards" instructions to someone a few weeks back, I eventually opted for saying "face the window every time you turn". This of course, has its downsides... next time we're dancing in public rather than in our practice hall, you have to stop and work out where the windows, the toilets and the fire exit are to orientate yourself.

Last night we had one of your Occasional Mabels (people who live too far away to make regular practices, but can be drafted in for emergencies) along, as she's coming with us to Burton at the weekend. She kept getting a particular turn wrong. Instructions like "left shoulder back" and "the easy way" having failed, a useful description was eventually reached:

Turn as if you're going to punch Liz in the face with your right hand.

She got it right every time after that.

Scared now.

Comments

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Surely either way 2 o'clock would be to the right?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er, yeah, er, that's what I meant.

I hasten to add that I do know my right and my left, it just seems I don't know which way clocks work.

(I blame the clock on my desk, which, since the entire dial rotates, has the numbers on it anti-clockwise. And my clock at home does actually run anti-clockwise.)

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Aha.
A friend has a superb clock with a reversed face which hangs opposite the mirror in the bathroom.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Aye. Except mine doesn't hang near a mirror :)

I remember utterly baffling my physics teacher because I could answer instinctively which way a bottle top/screw/etc unscrewed, but had to really think quite hard about which way round a clock went.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I was going to say "Is clockwise a reserved word in rapper dancing with its own dancing-specific meaning?", but with this in mind, I can see why it might not come to you completely naturally to describe turns as being clockwise or anticlockwise to others.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's just me, actually. Though I expect most people know which side of a clockface 2 is on, I reckon that in general if you say to someone "turn clockwise" they'll have to have a good think before turning.

Add to that the thinking time required to give them the correct instruction in the first place, and it's not terribly effective.

I'm curious, though. If anyone can say to someone who's not been party to this discussion "turn clockwise" and see if they get it right without undue thought, that'd be interesting. Human nature being what it is, though, they're more likely to say "no" or "why?" :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_corpse_/]

Have you tried: "Spin thi'sen widdershins, youth!" as an alternative?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Only mildly less confusing than "Gan deosil, hinny!"

(Now there's evidence of widespread witchcraft for you - dictionary.com lists "widdershins" but not "deosil".)

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I'm fine with it. Even before it was used as an instruction for Jive classes.

Although Rob did have a story that Americans can't understand "anticlockwise" as a direction. They do understand "clockwise".

It seems that the American for "anti-" has to be "counter-".

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Do they take counterhistamines for allergies?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Now you're just upping the counter.

[venta.livejournal.com]

In fact, last time I tried to use clockwise as a direction for someone (when talking about the M25), the person to whom I was talking about said "where's 12, the top or the bottom?"

It required some arguing, and indeed the providing of a watch and turning it round before I managed to demonstrate that it didn't matter where 12 waas, clockwise was still the same way.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

For the M25, I prefer to say "outside edge" and "inside edge" where I think I can get away with it.

For further entertainment, try giving someone directions around a wrong-way-roundabout with satellites: "You want to go straight on, so either turn left at the first roundabout, then right at the next, then left again at the next, or else turn right at the first, then left, then right again". "Eh?".

[venta.livejournal.com]

The important thing when giving someone directions is not to allow them any free will. Just tell them to go route A, without inviting them to consider route B (good in heavy traffic), route C (quicker but easier to get lost) or routes D-F available in varying other circumstances.

When you're driving through an unfamiliar place (which you must be, or you wouldn't need directions) being invited to consider various options is at best confusing and at worst fatal.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

In the case I have in mind it's actually a choice between the shorter route, and the route that doesn't involve driving the wrong way round a roundabout.

So OK, the director should make the decision, but you need to decide which will be better for the individual directee - whether they're more uncomfortable turning right onto a roundabout (e.g. because they're only ickle), or sticking with the instructions past the point where they blatantly can't be right, because if they were it would have been better to go the other way.

Then again, in the case I have in mind "follow the roadsigns" works quite well too.

For those who have the benefit of driving in Swindon, there's also the "head straight across the middle and hope you reach some sensible road markings eventually" option, which inspires very similar feelings to those which I imagine early mariners must have felt on venturing beyond sight of the coast.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

It depends whether you hold the watch horizontally or vertically, surely? If it is horizontal (the more usual position for a watch) then for the 12 to be on the bottom you would have to turn it face down, and then it would matter. I'm sure that's not what they meant, but the comment was odd whichever way you look at it!

[venta.livejournal.com]

To explain, the question was whether the 12 was at the north of the M25 (numbering round with 3 near the turn off for Folkestone, and 9 somewhere where the M4 joins), or the south (which would place the 6 up by the M1 or so). The asker was temporarily of the opinion that this would alter which way clockwise was.

It was a bit odd, but one of those mistakes I could imagine me making in a moment of uncertainty.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I'm with you on that. I was just looking to explain their confusion. With the 12 at the north of the M25 and 9 where the M4 joins, turning the watch face down ("upside down") would leave the 12 the same, but the 3 would now be at the M4 junction and clockwise/anti-clockwise would be reversed.

Describing a journey round the M25 as clockwise/anti-clockwise seems emminently sensible to me. I have never understood why at junctions onto the road where you have to decide which way you want to be going they don't say these, but insteasd choose two of north/south/east/west: I have to stop and think more about that. OTOH, if some people _do_ find the clockwise/anti-clockwise notation confusing, that will probably expalin it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Given that I have to pause and visualise a map to work out whether I want to go left or right (or north or south) on the M25, it would be just as easy to work out whether I wanted to go clockwise or anti-.

I wish they'd use anti-/clockwise on Circle Line maps on the tube, too. I've done the journey Paddington->Gloucester Rd several times, and it always confuses me that I get on an westbound train to get there, and then on an westbound train to reverse the journey.

(Yes, I know on a central line train it doesn't technically matter if you go the 'wrong' way, but sometimes that's a very long way round :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Damn. I tried to edit that comment before anyone realised I'd written 'eastbound' both times instead of west... but since I forgot to change the "an" to "a" I've let the moggy out of the sack.

Duh.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Indeed. On every other line it makes sense to talk about [NSEW]-bound trains: even if that isn't the direction they're currently travelling, they are at least bound in that direction.

[erming.livejournal.com]

(Yes, I know on a central line train it doesn't technically matter if you go the 'wrong' way, but sometimes that's a very long way round :)



Circle line surely (well apart from the little loop on the central line East and West are completely different.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean Circle Line, of course. Obviously not having a good day for getting things right today.

If I'd just stuck to my usual policy of saying Yellow Line I wouldn't have said Red Line by mistake and confusion would have been avoided :)