Marta Becket (1924–2017)
Autore di To Dance On Sands
Sull'Autore
Marta Becket was born Martha Beckett in Greenwich Village, New York on August 9, 1924. She joined the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall. She danced on Broadway in the 1946 revival of Show Boat, then in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Wonderful Town. In 1967, she looked into an abandoned social mostra altro hall in Death Valley Junction, California and visualized her own theater. For the next 40 years, she performed her ballets and pantomimes at the Amargosa Opera House. Her autobiography, To Dance on Sands: The Life and Art of Death Valley's Marta Becket, was published in 2006. She died on January 30, 2017 at the age of 92. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Opere di Marta Becket
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Altri nomi
- Becket, Martha (birth name)
- Data di nascita
- 1924-08-09
- Data di morte
- 2017-01-30
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- USA
- Luogo di nascita
- New York, New York, USA
- Luogo di morte
- Death Valley Junction, California, USA
- Causa della morte
- pneumonia
- Attività lavorative
- dancer
Utenti
Recensioni
Statistiche
- Opere
- 8
- Utenti
- 35
- Popolarità
- #405,584
- Voto
- 4.3
- Recensioni
- 1
- ISBN
- 5
The building's inscrutable exterior doesn't hint at the most striking feature inside - the murals painted by Ms. Becket on the walls of the opera house, the hotel lobby and several of the guest rooms. The audience of royals, priests, prostitutes and other worthies were created on the blank opera house walls to watch her perform when no one else would brave desert roads and temperature extremes to see her productions – written, choreographed and performed by Marta herself. (The painted audience may have seemed a bit redundant later when media attention, including a photo in National Geographic, brought packed houses to nearly every performance). Other murals depict cherubs, desert scenes, European streets. Together they offer a glimpse into a rich imagination and the remarkable will that brought it to life.
To Dance on Sands chronicles the life that led her to settle in Death Valley Junction in the late 1960s, following a brief stop many years earlier that introduced her to the desert and a fortuitous flat tire that stranded her years later at a gas station across the street from what became the Opera House.
Ms. Becket's troubled early life in Philadelphia and New York City included divorced parents, a disapproving and largely absent father, several moves and a dramatically overbearing mother, and led her to painting and theater as a refuge. A strange desire to remain physically childlike both to avoid the awkwardness of puberty and make her mother happy led her to begin ballet at nearly 14. The realization that she had started too late and was too tall to become a prima ballerina did not detract from her determination to dance, and she managed to support both her mother and her own artistic vision by dancing in touring companies and selling her paintings. This provided enough money to stage her own productions, one at Carnegie Hall. Her focus on her art was single-minded, always. She recognizes that “I’m not like other dancers. I don’t need the parties, the boyfriends, nor the social life. I like people out in front, on the other side of the footlights. When the show is over, they go home, leaving me alone with my best friend, myself. I may be a dancer, but I have the temperament of a painter who must work alone for hours. Solitude is my fuel.”
Only about 50 pages are devoted to her life at Death Valley Junction, where she remade the unused theater and then the hotel, gave ballet lessons to local children, and above all painted and danced. She was not there to make friends, noting that the townsfolk considered her husband and her “odd.” Her husband eventually tired of the desert life and his wife’s single-minded focus and moved on, replaced by a companion who might also have been considered odd by the townsfolk, but who supported her work and even performed with her. “The important thing now was to do my thing,” Marta writes. “Whether anything would come of it was not important.” Something did in fact come of it; thousands saw Marta perform before her final performance in 2012, a documentary film was made about her, her paintings are collected. She’s an inspiration to those who admire the ones who follow their own vision, wherever it leads.… (altro)