Deep in the Mojave Desert, in the midst of forlorn buildings all but forgotten by time, a peacock crows at sunset. Spotlights flicker on, illuminating the uneven texture of the theater's chipped adobe walls, as a crowd gathers in anticipation of the night's performance. We were all there, 25 of us in a town called Death Valley Junction, for the Amargosa Opera performed by Marta Becket, a 79-year-old ballerina who has made this out-of-the-way place her home for the past 37 years.

Like a shimmering mirage, Death Valley Junction rises from the sands of the wild desert in a blur of colorful characters and surreal fantasies laid down by an artist's brush. Seven miles from the dust blown border of California and Nevada, and thirty miles from the nearest town, this historic crossroad is like something out of an exotic dream. By all rights, Death Valley Junction is a ghost town. But with a population of 2, and an operating hotel and opera house, the town is very much alive and kicking... or should I say, dancing...

I discovered the place by chance, in one of those serendipitous moments that can only happen while on the road... with no place in particular to go and miles of highway before you. The sun baked white buildings appeared out of nowhere, and on first glance, looked completely abandoned like many of the other structures one passes along silent desert roads - vacant, derelict artifacts from the past left to slowly crumble with the passing of time. Their stories, often left up to your own imagination, compose the magic of the desert, the reason I was there. It was kismet to find Marta's hotel and opera house.

The story of Death Valley Junction starts in the rough-and-tumble days of California's mining boomtowns, when it served as a company town for Pacific Borax. Originally called Amargosa, the settlement, a simple complex of Mexican Colonial style buildings, included company offices, a store, hotel, dining room, and dormitory. In 1924, Corkhill Hall was built for townies to gather for dances, meetings, church services, and funerals. Eventually the company left the area, the town went into decline, and the hall sat abandoned between 1948 and 1967. By the '60s, much of the town was deserted, leaving Death Valley Junction on the verge of retirement.

Enter: Marta Becket.

Becket, a native of Manhattan and hopelessly in love with the theater, left her dance career in the big city and went on the road in the spring of 1967 to tour her solo act. She was following a dream to have her own show, from the dances and story line, right down to the choice of buttons on the costumes. It was a flat tire that brought Marta to Death Valley Junction. While exploring the town, she found her muse... her opera house hidden under layers of peeling paint and overgrown mesquite trees. Finding a gap in the door of Corkhill Hall, Marta saw a glimpse of her future. "Peering through the tiny hole, I had the distinct feeling that I was looking at the other half of myself. The building seemed to be saying... take me... do something with me... I offer you life."

The next day, Marta rented Corkhill for $45.00 per month and renamed it the Amargosa Opera House. In the glow of stage lights made from coffee cans, she gave her first performance in 1968 for an audience of 12 and has been dancing there ever since. She bought the entire town in the early '80s, which by this time was entirely abandoned - save the opera house, hotel, and two plucky residents: herself and stage partner, Tom Willet.

Today, Death Valley Junction is a destination for desert drifters and curious travelers with a bent for the eccentric side of life. We come for the odd spectacle of an opera in the desert and a night's stay in the eerie atmosphere of a ghost town's hotel. Its rooms give the feeling of a place trapped in time, with vintage furniture and fittings, and the familiarity of the guest room at your grandmother's house. Some of the rooms have lonely, naked walls while others are bedecked with murals painted by Marta.

With performances on Saturday nights from October through May, Death Valley Junction whirls to life in a trail of tulle as Marta and Willet, fondly known as Wilget, weave a tale, unique and bizarre, on the stage of the Opera House. Inside the theater, the walls awaken as an opulent audience of 16th century spectators peers out from the shadows of gilded balconies. In the early days of the Opera House, Becket found herself without an audience on many nights. So, true to her inventive spirit, she simply created her own by painting the entire theater with a baroque mural of patrons that includes nobility, nuns, monks, bullfighters, gypsies, jugglers, jesters... even ladies of the night. The honored guests of Marta's audience, her King and Queen, remain the focal point of the theater's artwork and capture Marta's powerful gaze during performances.

"The murals, the place," she says in her haunting way, "are a dedication to the past, without which our times would have no beauty."

With one foot firmly planted in the bygone days of the old west, and the other lifted in a high kick towards an unknown future, Marta performs on the stage with verve. Performances - comedic, dramatic and unusual - are set to canned music and employ several sets and numerous costume changes. On the stage, Marta's ghost-like visage, a countenance defined by age, pale white skin, raven black hair and brooding dark eyes, sings and dances along with Wilget and an odd assemblage of life-sized, stuffed dolls with hand drawn faces. She executes the final act in toe shoes, almost entirely en pointe, and even at the age of 79, Marta hovers above the stage.

"I do everything," she'll tell you. And she does, from conceiving the story, to selecting music, writing the script, designing the sets and costumes and, of course, performing. Wilget, seldom seen without his gold sequined derby, does his part, too. He'll tell you he's the stage manager, ticket-taker, usher, curtain-puller and ("oh, yeah") actor. This season's production, Masquerade, tells the story of a yearly dance where the alter egos of revelers take over their personas, where dreams become reality. Marta told me she gets inspiration for her productions from music, but what I saw in her work are stories developed from a deep understanding of existence, its mysteries, and a life fully lived.

No one knows what will become of the Opera House and Death Valley Junction in the distant future. Marta prefers to keep this secret to herself. But a mural in the hotel lobby offers a glimpse of her vision. In it, Death Valley Junction is stripped down to a skeletal frame, ravaged by the elements of its desert home. A phantom, transcendent and luminous, dances off into the sky.

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