Overture
All my friends and acquaintances from New York thought I had lost
my mind when I told them about this old theater that had been abandoned for twenty years. When I told them I was planning to leave
New York for good and make a new life for myself out in the desert, they were convinced that I was now a hopeless case and gave me up for good.
Fifteen years passed before I heard from any of them. Perhaps they saw my picture and an article about me in a National Geographic they saw in some dentist’s office. The article told a story about this dancer from New York who performs every night in an abandoned theater in the desert whether anyone shows up or not. In fact, they even said I painted a Renaissance audience on all three walls of my theater so that I would be guaranteed an audience each performance night. This of course is untrue. I painted a Renaissance audience to surround my performance with an atmosphere complementary to what I performed.
Of course, much of what has been written about me makes me seem crazy. It makes for good press. And of course, it makes gossip more fun.
In 1967, on my birthday, I settled in the town of Death Valley Junction. When I arrived, this place wasn’t deserted. There was the old Amargosa Hotel which was operated by several families who were given a place to live in return. This of course did not mean they knew anything about operating a hotel. There was also a filling station across the road. “Death Valley Junction Service,” it read over the porte-cochere.