K. Partridge: Movement Director
Luscinda L. Dickey: Choreographer, Musical Composition, Dancer
Carrie Leigh Dickey: Costumes and Hair, Cinematographer and Video Editor
THE PROCESS
Back in late summer of 2021, my dance teacher and I were trying to come up with a concept for our next dance: something different that would push the boundaries of what I had done before.
I had meanwhile been playing around with a melody on the piano. The melody had evolved into the beginnings of a song. That’s when the idea hit: what would happen if we completely flipped the way that most dances were choreographed and, instead choreographing a dance to a piece of music, I wrote the music to a dance?
The dance itself, we decided, would be inspired by a piece of artwork that I had loved ever since I’d first seen it: John Coyne’s “Oculus, 2021.” The watercolor shows a table and a chair in the middle of an otherwise empty oculus. What was a seemingly broken chair doing in that massive oculus? What could be lingering in those strange shadows and that black doorway? What story could have taken place there?
This mysterious room was like the Hall of Charn in C. S. Lewis’ “The Magician’s Nephew” with its empty courtyards, yawning arches, curious light, and frozen figures. I worked to turn my thoughts into movement, and one month later, I had about two minutes of choreography. At that point, the dance was about a Girl who wanders into the oculus and encounters a dark enchantment that holds everyone in it captive. But as beautiful as the dance was, I still felt like something was missing. It wasn’t enough to know that The Girl was encountering an enchantment, we needed to see the enchantment itself.
It was then that I decided to split the dance into two parts giving one to The Girl and the other to a new character: The Witch, who embodies the room’s enchantment.
But why just have two characters when we could tell the story even better with three? Inspired by the shapes in the painting’s darkness and that looming, black doorway, I created the character of The Shadow.
THE OUTCOME
“In the Oculus” is the story of The Witch, The Shadow, and The Girl. The Witch is a dangerous and evil Queen. She has the strength and the magic of many women. The Shadow is The Witch’s minion. Tortured and in constant agony, she embodies the spirits of those who have fallen under the Witch’s enchantment. The Girl is a normal, everyday person who has wandered in The Witch’s oculus and finds that she has more power than she ever knew. The music gives each character a distinct voice.
2025 REFLECTIONS ON THIS DANCE
I am sitting here writing this note to you on December 4th, 2025—nearly four years after first writing this post—WOW!! How amazing it is to look back at “In the Oculus” and its music and see seeds of the future that I didn’t even know were there! The story-telling choreography, layered characters, and dense imagery of “In the Oculus” was a first peek into The Moon-dancer, while my song on the piano was my very first composing adventure. Isn’t that wild?? Remember, maybe that wacky, boundary-pushing, experimental project buzzing gleefully in your brain is a foretelling seed of your future too! — Much love, Luscinda ♥
Luscinda L. Dickey 