The advance and retreat of the ice sheets can thus be discerned quite accurately from such sediment cores.

ECONOMIST: The South Pole as location and metaphor

The result has the elegance of a formal dance - a kind of minuet, in which the participants advance and retreat according to well-understood rules, until they have arrived at a satisfactory outcome.

BBC: A Point of View: Mourning the loss of the written word

With much hesitation and dithering, they move toward each other, only to retreat, advance again, and so on.

NEWYORKER: Wild Grass