  Upon combining Northrop's picture of charged particle motion with modern
liquid crystal theories, this paper provides a new description of guiding
center dynamics (to lowest order). This new perspective is based on a rotation
gauge field (gyrogauge) that encodes rotations around the magnetic field. In
liquid crystal theory, an analogue rotation field is used to encode the
rotational state of rod-like molecules. Instead of resorting to sophisticated
tools (e.g. Hamiltonian perturbation theory and Lie series expansions) that
still remain essential in higher-order gyrokinetics, the present approach
combines the WKB method with a simple kinematical ansatz, which is then
replaced into the charged particle Lagrangian. The latter is eventually
averaged over the gyrophase to produce Littlejohn's guiding-center equations. A
crucial role is played by the vector potential for the gyrogauge field. A
similar vector potential is related to liquid crystal defects and is known as
`wryness tensor' in Eringen's micropolar theory.
