"The Urchin's Dream" - from early repertoire, Foto: F. Fonsagrives

I was born in New York, Greenwich Village. At the age of three I developed a burning desire to dance. My favorite pastime was playing theatre which became an obsession I never outgrew. My father was a newspaper reporter. Because of this he got passes to the best there was in concerts, opera, ballet, and the theater. At least once a week he would take my mother and me to one of these experiences. I drew pictures, painted and danced around the apartment wearing the sleeves from my mother`s old evening gowns for tights, while chiffon skirts became veils and scarves which fluttered to music from the grammophone. When I was nine I moved to Philadelphia where I was able to get a scolarship in piano and art. Under the guidance of Antonio Cortizas I began developing as an artist. By now the depression had hit the country. My parents divorced and it wasn't until I was twelve that mother and I returned to New York. Soon after that I attended Washington Irving High School, where I majored in art. Two evenings a week I took interpretive dancing at Greenwich House with Ingaborg Tarrup. After that I got a scholarship at Gluck Sandor`s ballet school on 5th Avenue and eighteenth street. Although strict rules scoff at pointe shoes before three years study, I was adviced to buy my first pair after only two lessons. By now I was fourteen. After a year with Gluck Sandor I left to study with Madame Duval who corrected the bad habbits I had aqucired from dancing on point to soon. It was Washinton Irving High School and their scholarship fund that sponsored my new training and I was always very greatful for this. Now I was on the path to proper placement and the less flamboyant style. It was now 1941 the second World War started and at this time my mother encouraged me to quit highschool because it was necessary to start earning money. The depression ended with its slow pace and everyone scrambled for survival. One New Years Eve was the start of my career performing in tiny night-clubs in and around New York, Brooklyn and the Bronx. In betwen engagements. I would perform at army and Navy hospitals and on numerous occasions the Stage Door Canteen... Because I was too tall for a ballet company I auditioned for the corpse de ballet at Radio City Music Hall. I was accepted. Only after much struggle and painful adjustment I was able to adept to the requirements of being a corpse dancer. At the Music Hall I auditioned for George Abbot and Herb Ross and was chosen as one of four girl dancers for a musical -

Rear view of the mural in the Amargosa Opera House, Foto: T. Scodwell

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN - starring Shirley Booth. The musical played the Alvin Theatre for little over a year. It was now 1951. After this show closed a "would-be impressario" asked me to form a group of eight dancers and create six ballets with a distinctly oriental flavour. He had in mind conventions, Greek clubs and special parties for Ethnic groups in and around New York. Overjoyed at someone challenging to such a creative test, I rounded up 15 unemployed dancers whom I knew, arranged with a teacher friend of mine named Seda to rehearse in her studio free up at 181st Street, and went to work. I did research in the daytime at all types of oriental fairy tales and fables - Armenian, Turkish, Egyptian and Indian. I collected all the Middle East recordings I could find, and with that musical training I had arranged the sections I wanted for piano. I rehearsed with the dancers every evening for a month. There was an agent who had an office in the Palace Theatre building who was very interested. His name was Ned Jerome. He agreed to come to Sedas studio one very hot night. He was quite elderly, and being a large man as well, came up the stairs with difficulty. Seating him on a chair, I explained that I was going to play all the parts myself and told him that I could recruit all my dancers back at the moments notice if he should be interested. As I proceeded to dance out all the parts all myself turning records in betwen, with the hot light bulb hanging over my audition, I never dreamed that the particular evening would mark the turning point of my theatrical carreer. While I danced I could see Mr. Jerome in the twilight of the light bulb. He had a broad smile when I finished. Then ... he spoke. "You don't need all those dancers. You have a unique idea here, dancing and playing all parts yourself. I don't know of anyone who had done it before. Work on it. It will take time. I only wish one day I could see it. When you get around to having it ready... I will be gone." Years later I met my future husband Tom Williams. Showing interest in my program, he displayed a genuine desire to try and book it, become my manager and my companion on the road, as well as for life. (...) Tom began to book my program through the mail. He took some fine pictures of me in costumes and made up some brochures. Bookings began to materialize. At the same time I took some of my early paintings to an unknown gallery in Greenwich Village out of financial desperation. These early paintings, done mostly on shirt-cardboards, began to sell. There was a demand on more paintings led to my working on sanded masonite with the casein medium. January of 1964 we went out on a tour to the west coast. This time we had more Community Concerts than Colleges. We were beginning to notice a difference in the selection of attractions the universties booked. The solo performer was having

Abandoned Corkill Hall before it was the Amargosa Opera House, 1967

a hard time. The one person show was no longer en vogue. Now big rock bands were the rage. The soloist who played an instrument, danced or sang, was no longer 'in'. 1964 marked the beginning of the flower children. The market for my kind of attraction was dying. I strongly rejected the thought, however of hopping from one vocation to another simply because the wind blew from another direction. I had devoted my entire life to dancing. My childhood was spent dreaming about it, ...later on studying to be a dancer, ... working as a dancer and finally, bringing it all into my own world which I was not about to give up. I couldn't allow my art to die even if I were the only one left who cared about it. If I allowed everything I lived and worked for to simply fade into nothingness because no one was left to share it, I would die to. I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't about to trade my reason for living in favour of security, three meals a day, and a roof over my head. By the time we reached California it was easter. There was a lull in our tour. We decided to camp in Death Valley for a week's vacation. One morning we woke up and find we had a flat tire on our trailer. From one of the park rangers there, we learned the best place to have it repaired was Death Valley Junction. Ever so slowly we limped our way out of Death Valley and onto Highway 190 which took us straight to Death Valley Junction. By the time we reached Death Valley Junction it was noon. (...) Tom proceeded to repair the tire on the trailer while I had some moments to explore. As I gazed down the long colonnade of what was known as the Amargosa Hotel, I remembered having seen it before. I had been here at the end of a tour in 1965. It was dusk then, with the damp mist of drizzle hanging in the air. The adobe buildings were hardly visible. Now as I stood in the noonday sun gazing at this long colonnade I remembered expressing a wish to return, perhaps to paint for a long time. I t was as if I suddenly found myself in a place where time stopped. An invisible wall seemed to surround this place - impenetrable, creating a retreat from today. My eyes they wandered down the colonnade to where it turned a corner. Smaller buildings with gates leading to possible courtyards continued and suddenly my eyes fell on the largest structure in the row. It was a theatre. I couldn't believe it. Hypnotically I was drawn down to this structure. By now I had forgotten the tire. I completely forgot about where we were going next. I walked over to the building, afraid to take my eyes off of at least it should disappear. Then I wandered around the back, accelerating my step until I found myself in a courtyard shaded by large Tamarisk trees. There was a back door, possibly a stage door, I thought. I peered through a hole in the door to see inside. A few sunbeams pierced the dark interior. Finally my eyes were able to make out a small stage with faded calico curtains hanging from the track. Debris was strewn all over the warped floor boards, and several rows of wooden benches faced to the stage.. Some old roller skates lay up front, and directly at the food of the sunbeam was a doll's head with its blue glass eyes staring back at me. Pockets of dust and sand provided a backdrop for kangaroo and desert spiders. It was obvious the theater had been abandoned for some time. It seemed to be the only unused building in Death Valley Junction. As I peerede through the tiny hole, I had the distinct feeling that I was looking on the other half of myself. The building seemed to be saying "Take me ... do something with me ... I offer you life." Like the theater, I too was beginning to feel unused. A dancer cannot stay in form and be artistically fulfilled touring four months with only twentyone concerts, to say nothing of road expenses and the cost of studio space to pactice during weeks of layoff. I continued gazing through the small hole in the door knowing at that moment I had to have that theater. I would find a new life in it and in so doing perhaps I would be giving it life. Here I would have the time and space to commission myself to do work that no one else would ever ask me to do. The date we set up to open the doors to the public was February 10th, 1968. The night for the big premiere finally came. I danced for an audience of twelve adults, children and grandchildren. All of them lived in Death Valley Junction. It rained that night, so to the accompaniment of strategically placed coffee cans, I performed, to the hypnotic effect of dripping water, Strauss, Dvorak and Tchaikowsky. From that time on the door of the Amargosa Opera House opened without fail Friday, Saturday and Monday evening at 7:45 p.m., and the curtain parted promptly at 8:15. Our audiences consisted of locals and curious tourists; sometimes no one at all came. At one such performance, we started the overture and I commenced to dance. In the middle of my first piece four people came in. As it turned out, two of these people were on the staff of the National Geographic Magazine. They wrote a story about the incident and from then on it has become well known that at the Armagosa Opera House, the 8:15 curtain waits for no one. In July, 1968 we had a terrible flash flood. Death Valley Juntion stood in twelve inches of muddy water. It took a week to squeegee the mud from out of the opera house. While taking a break from this chore one afternoon I gazed up at the blank white walls now streaked again from recent rainwater and instantly envisioned a Renaissance audience completely surrounding me, gazing down from the walls onto the stage. "I am going to paint an audience on the walls of this theatre," I exclaimed. No one would believe me! Tom wouldn`t believe me! He didn`t believe me until one day I presented him with a sketch for a rear wall complete with balconies filled with characters who might have attended an opera back in the 16th century. From the King and Queen center, to royality, nobility, bullfighters, monks and nuns, the walls came to life. Two of our cats, Rhubarb and Toxedo, grace each end as they sleep on the red velvet cushions. In three months the entire rear wall was completed, including the inside of the double doors upon which I painted a lady dancing to an accompaniment provided by a musician playing an antique musicak instrument. By now my inspiration soared. Turning the corner, more characters from out of the past spilled onto the walls from my imagination, from ladies of the night to gypsies, from revelers to a group of royal children tended by a governess who is being courted by a gentleman seated in the balcony above. American Indians discovered by the Spanish in the early 16th century grace the walls at the bottom, performing various feats of skills and chance for the entertainment of the King and Queen. Upon these walls I had created a world of the past. Inevitably this whole effort became a religious experience. Reclaiming a heritage from centuries ago which I saw being destroyed the past several years, I now created my own opera house as a dedication to those now buried in the so-called rubble of progress. It took four years to complete the murals. During this time the audience grew. 105 garden chairs were acquired through the donations of trading stamps from our patrons. More stories were written about the opera house in the desert, in National magazines and newspapers. Even with all we had accomplished by 1972, we were still renting the theater. I had just given four years of my life for this walls. There were many, including the art gallery back in New York that sold my paintings, who chided me as foolish. The murals could never be removed, sold or bought. From the very first brushstroke my world of the past was owned by someone who didn`t even know it was there. These critics would never understand that the experience I had creating this mural was worth more than anything anyone could offer me for it. Yes, I knew it was possible our theatre could be taken away from us. But I knew too that those four years I spent painting it could never be taken away from me. They will be with me always, wherever I go. For the Amargosa Opera House, the show goes on. The 8:15 curtains wait for no one. I have been able to share my dreams because a public comes to share them with me. I have been able to keep on creating new works because of a supportive guild of membership who believes in my work. I want to thank all those who presently support and give of their time. To those who did so in the past, I want to thank as well. I do not plan for the years ahead. I don`t try to attempt to guess what I will be able to do ten years from now. At present I dance and I continue to paint. I have my stage to call my own. My imagination has carried me on a journey from the past to the present. From New York to Death Valley Junction... and a tiny theatre nobody wanted. I dare not question where I go from here. I do not predict big plans for my art and the town of Death Valley Junction. Instead... I work. I do the best I can. I am greatful to have found the place where I can fulfill my dreams and share them with the passing scene... for long as I can.

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