“You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams. And I know if I can make you smile by jumping over a couple of couches or running through a rainstorm, then I’ll be very glad to be a song and dance man.” — Gene Kelly
K. Partridge: Movement Director
Luscinda L. Dickey: Dancer and Painter
Carrie Leigh Dickey: Costume and Hair, Cinematographer and Video Editor
The Inspiration:
It was the summer of 2016. I was newly nine years old. And for this monumental birthday, my parents had given me the greatest present one can give an aspiring thespian: THEATRE!! And not just any theatre—MUSICAL THEATRE. I was to have my first official experience of the limelight in a summer camp production with Spring Theatre. Yes, Mommy and Daddy paid for my spot, but I still had to AUDITION (three cheers for “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”!). I had my name on a CAST LIST (my character had the first lines in the show too, thank you very kindly!). I had an authentic MTI SCRIPT, my very own CHARACTER SHOES, special COSTUME FITTINGS, and (of course!) two weeks of VERY SERIOUS REHEARSALS for proving my skills as a TRIPLE-THREAT. That’s right, sweetheart! I was one of those magnificent nine-year-olds who could act and sing and dance like Gene Kelly! Or that’s what I thought. At first. For maybe a day. Then, I met that little awkward corner of the world called “Group Two.” Group Two is the place you go when the choreographer says: “arms out and chassé right!” and you just… stand there… and then go left.
Now, not even the royalty in Group One were absolute dance-masters (though they sure seemed like it to me!). We all had to take bona fide lessons at Juxtaposition Studios, now Juxtaposition Fine Arts. My mom was waiting outside on this first lesson day when her calm walk around the gravel lot was interrupted by an unsettling sound. I quote her elegant turn of thought as follows: “Oh my gosh, what’s that?? There’s a stampede of horses about to burst through the wall!” Of course, it wasn’t horses. It was just 20 young ones learning how to “flap.” It was the sound of tap dance: a magical artform in which the dancer both moves to music and makes music.
By the end of my summer camp run, I had developed a fierce adoration for tap. I was soon back at Juxtaposition for a weekly tap and musical theatre class. I gobbled it up while simultaneously feeling like a strange, leggy stomper who stood heads above her classmates. My teacher, Ms. K., and my parents came up with a new plan: I was to take private lessons with tap as my focus. That was it! I was off and flying. I still might not have known exactly what to do with my arms (“They looked like wiggling ribbons!” my mom says), and “left and right” remained an enigma, yet I was in my element. My nine-year-old showcase dance: tap! My ten-year-old showcase dance: tap! The dance we recorded with eleven-year-old me in a stripy jumpsuit: tap—obviously! And I had such a blast tapping that everyone watching me had a blast too. I especially loved to tap for my great-grandmother who could still do a brilliant Charleston at 90 years old. Even when she was not there, I would imagine she was and dance like I’d dance for her. I still do that to this day.
I started to outgrow my last pair of black Capezio tap shoes around 2020. We kept saying we’d buy new ones, but the time was never right. Besides, I had discovered contemporary and interpretive dance and was wrapped up in exploring this new way of expression. Almost four years passed. I was deep in my series of “The Moon-dancer.” And, still, I kept saying: “I will rediscover tap. I’ve got to. One of my next dances WILL be tap.”
The latest installment of “The Moon-dancer” is for the phase of the waning gibbous. The waning gibbous is symbolic of reflection, gratitude, and release. It embodies a time when we look both deep inside ourselves at who we are becoming and out with thanksgiving to the people who love us, teach us, and journey with us along the way. We remember. And then we let go and give back. “The Moon-dancer: Waning Gibbous” was recorded on May 1, 2026, just 20 days before my eighteenth birthday—the day I officially step out into the limelight of life. To me, this dance is a little, enchanting waltz through memory and a gift back.
And it’s tap. Obviously.
“The Moon-dancer: Waning Gibbous” premiered to the public on June 13, 2026 at Luscinda’s Senior Recital and High School Graduation.
The Music:
Scott Joplin’s “Bethena, A Concert Waltz”
Luscinda L. Dickey 