I too find that the dancer just will. not. spin. counterclockwise. no matter how long I look at it.
But after trying a few things, I found an “intervention” to make it so. (No clue whether it’ll work for anyone else, but I find it interesting that it works for me.) While looking at the dancer, I hold my right hand in front of the gif on the screen, slightly below so I can see both; then as the leg goes leftward, I perform counter-clockwise rotation with the hand, as if loosening an oversized screw. (And I try to make the act very deliberate, rather than absent-mindedly doing the movement.) After repeating this a few times, I generally perceive the counter-clockwise rotation, which sometimes lasts a few seconds and sometimes longer.
I also tried putting other counter-clockwise-spinning animations next to the dancer, but that didn’t do anything.
For me the dancer was spinning contraclockwise and would not change. With your screwing trick I could change rotation, and where now stably stuck in the clockwise direction. Until I screwed in the other direction. I’ve now done this back and forth a few times.
In case you missed it, there’s a show/hide box at the bottom of the wiki article with three side-by-side synchronized spinning dancers—the original one in the middle, and broken-symmetry ones on either side, with internal edges drawn in to break the ambiguity. I fixed my gaze on the counterclockwise dancer while gradually uncovering the original dancer with my hand, and thus got the original spinning counterclockwise in my peripheral vision. Then I gradually moved my eyes towards the original and had her spinning counterclockwise in the center of my view for a bit! …But then she flipped back when I blinked. Sounds vaguely similar to the kind of thing you were doing. I got bored pretty quick and stopped trying :)
I too find that the dancer just will. not. spin. counterclockwise. no matter how long I look at it.
But after trying a few things, I found an “intervention” to make it so. (No clue whether it’ll work for anyone else, but I find it interesting that it works for me.) While looking at the dancer, I hold my right hand in front of the gif on the screen, slightly below so I can see both; then as the leg goes leftward, I perform counter-clockwise rotation with the hand, as if loosening an oversized screw. (And I try to make the act very deliberate, rather than absent-mindedly doing the movement.) After repeating this a few times, I generally perceive the counter-clockwise rotation, which sometimes lasts a few seconds and sometimes longer.
I also tried putting other counter-clockwise-spinning animations next to the dancer, but that didn’t do anything.
I tried it and it works for me too.
For me the dancer was spinning contraclockwise and would not change. With your screwing trick I could change rotation, and where now stably stuck in the clockwise direction. Until I screwed in the other direction. I’ve now done this back and forth a few times.
In case you missed it, there’s a show/hide box at the bottom of the wiki article with three side-by-side synchronized spinning dancers—the original one in the middle, and broken-symmetry ones on either side, with internal edges drawn in to break the ambiguity. I fixed my gaze on the counterclockwise dancer while gradually uncovering the original dancer with my hand, and thus got the original spinning counterclockwise in my peripheral vision. Then I gradually moved my eyes towards the original and had her spinning counterclockwise in the center of my view for a bit! …But then she flipped back when I blinked. Sounds vaguely similar to the kind of thing you were doing. I got bored pretty quick and stopped trying :)
On my phone, rotating the screen by 180° quickly reverses the direction and then I rotate it back slowly.