Dodgewaltz

Dodgewaltz (n.) is what happens when two people walking towards each other on a pavement try, with the very best of intentions, to get out of each other's way. One steps to the left. The other, at precisely the same moment, steps to the right, which is the same side. Both correct. Both correct again. For three or four seconds, two complete strangers move in perfect harmony, like partners who have practised for months, while going absolutely nowhere.

The dodgewaltz has a strict structure. It opens with the approach, in which both walkers notice each other slightly too late. Then comes the first sidestep, the mirror, the small laugh and the second sidestep. The dance usually ends with one of the partners freezing completely, flattening against a shop window and gesturing the other past with a sweeping arm, like a doorman at a very grand hotel.

There are regional styles. The supermarket dodgewaltz is performed with trolleys and is slower and more stately. The corridor dodgewaltz is common in offices, where it can be repeated with the same colleague several times a day, growing more embarrassing with each performance. The most advanced form is the doorway dodgewaltz, in which both people insist on holding the door for the other until someone gives in and walks through sideways.

Dancers rarely speak. When they do, the vocabulary is limited to sorry, oops and a strange little sound that is half a laugh and half a sigh. Some pairs add a joke, usually shall we dance, which both of them have heard before and both of them pretend is new. Once the dance is over, neither will look back, because looking back risks eye contact, and eye contact risks an encore.

The dodgewaltz strikes the polite far more often than the rude. A person who marches straight ahead without adjusting is never invited to dance. It is the considerate, the hesitant and the people who were just reading a text message who find themselves swaying on the pavement, apologising to someone they will never see again, with a strong sense that it was somehow their fault.

The real thing behind the word is a genuine puzzle of coordination. People who study how pedestrians move have found that we steer through crowds by constantly predicting where others are heading, reading clues such as which way a person's head and body are turned. Most of the time this works so smoothly that nobody notices. The dance starts when both people read each other at the same moment, choose the same side and then both correct at once.

That is why looking at a phone makes it more likely: the walker gives off fewer clues about where they are going. The simplest cure is to decide early and make it obvious, by moving clearly to one side and looking in the direction you intend to go. The other person can then read the signal and choose the opposite side. It is not quite as charming as a waltz, but it gets both of you home.