Meanwhile, a young woman danced at Radio City Music Hall and on Broadway. She appeared in "Showboat", "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and "A Wonderful Town". This woman was Marta Becket and she really wanted to dance her own dances, design her own costumes and create her own show. Which is exactly what she did and she took her solo show on the road.
Marta and her husband found themselves in California, in the spring of 1967, after months of touring. They decided to spend a week's vacation camping in Death Valley. They awoke one morning to a flat tire and while her husband attended to the tire at the gas station in Death Valley Junction, Marta began to explore the old adobe buildings of the company town. Walking down the long colonnade of what was known as the Amargosa Hotel, she was hypnotically drawn around the corner where she discovered the largest building in the row, a theatre. Marta never left! She renamed the theatre Amargosa Opera House and spent the next decades, restoring, painting and refining. She also performed and only retired in February 2012 at the age of 88.