To turn, turn will be our delight
Sep. 22nd, 2004 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaIn 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 06:33 am (UTC)I usually know roughly which direction I've started in, and just keep an approximate track of how much I've turned in which direction (eg. M40 to London is East, so if I turn left I'm going North).
Failing that, there are useful landmarks, such as the M1 (North!).
Once I'm into the traditional "maze of twisty turny backroads", this does go to pot, as I'm usually more concerned with finding the "third turning on the left, then nextdoor to the house with the red door" than I am about worrying about which way I'm actually facing. And even on the middling scale, it can get thrown by non-obvious turns.
For example, Oxford's High Street runs East-West at the Carfax end, but has a non-obvious bend in it around Longwall Street. And Cowley Road doesn't actually run North-South (although I always think that it does. Actually it's Iffley Road that's North-South). Of course, since I know about those two, they're not a problem. But similar gimmicks in other places can throw me.