The Alchemy of the BLACK ROSE: A Conversation with MARYA STARK
The realm of contemporary myth and conscious performance art is currently witnessing an evolutionary leap as multi-instrumentalist, multimedia enchantress, and revered bard Marya Stark prepares to resume a profoundly inspired project. Born out of the deep, dark heart of creative cross-pollination, this new manifestation, titled Black Rose, serves as a swirling spiral of her greater canonical universe known as She Rose.
For years, Stark has operated as an esteemed carrier of medicine songs and archetypal stories, pulling esoteric soundscapes from celestial spaces straight into the raw intimacy of human performance. This latest excursion represents a fearless dive into a complete, multi-dimensional world, building a lush bridge between the ancient tradition of folklore and the visceral, heavy pulse of experimental theater.
The genesis of this specific transmission traces back to an inspired spark of alignment during the celebrated release cycle for her stripped-down, vulnerability-drenched 2023 masterpiece, Weightless. It was at the album celebration party that Stark first locked artistic frequencies with visionary dance director Swan, initiating a two-year collaborative exploration that ultimately birthed the Oracle Performance Academy and the sweeping She Rose tour.
What follows is an intimate, deep-dive conversation tracking the intense training blocks, the ritualistic alchemy, and the profound mystical elements that dictated the structure of this transformative debut. Prepare to step directly into the sacred cauldron alongside Marya Stark as she maps out the absolute surrender, the collaborative friction, and the sheer magic required to bring the invisible fully into the visible light.
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SHE ROSE/BLACK ROSE dates & info, GO HERE
B.Getz: Talk about the debut of your new project, Black Rose, a spiral of a greater work She Rose. Marya, you’ve been collaborating with the dance director Swan for a while now. How did this specific project come to life?
Marya: Swan and I started collaborating two years ago when she performed at my Weightless album release party. We became fast friends and realized we wanted to do more than just a one-off performance; we wanted to build a whole world.
Two years ago, we went all-in on the She Rose tour, which was this epic, three-hour show with massive articulate choreography. After taking a breather from that, we wanted to see what we could create this fall. That led to the “Oracle Performance Academy”—a ritual theater dance school where Swan facilitated student dancers. The shows at Bloom were the culmination of a month of intensive training for them.
BG: I understand there was a very mystical element to how the music and the performance were structured for this debut.
Marya: Absolutely. It all coalesced through a collaboration with Isis Indria. We wanted to do a Samhain event in Nevada City, and the three of us decided to create something deep together.
We performed a divination based on Isis’s methods, and we actually created the entire show by reading the results of that divination. From those insights, I wrote the final song, “Black Rose.” It was a “lightning in a bottle” moment—I wrote it in five minutes and produced it just as fast. Performing it with nine women wearing crow wings… the energy was just incredible.
BG: You released “Black Rose” on the New Moon in Scorpio. That feels like a very fast turnaround compared to your usual creative process.
Marya: It’s a totally different stride for me. My recent process has been patient and long—very much a “cocooning” phase. This is the opposite. But for the sake of maximum synchronicity and magic, I felt I had to put it out on that day.
I premiered six new pieces of music at these shows, some of which will be on my upcoming album, Vas, next year. Sharing these tracks now felt vulnerable and risky because I’m still very new to integrating backing tracks with live performance.
BG: That’s a big shift for a folk artist. What pushed you toward using electronic tracks?
Marya: It honestly came out of necessity. As a folk artist who loves cinematic, orchestral music, the idea of backing tracks used to feel almost nauseating! But during the Weightless show, my collaborator Daniel Berkman got COVID right before and had to miss the show.
I realized that if we were going to tour with a big dance troupe, I couldn’t have the show fall apart if one person got sick. The dancers need consistency. It forced me into a “crucible” of remixing my songs and wrangling tracks. Now I’m in this new phase where I realize we can do both—live instrumentation and produced tracks. It’s opened up so much room for the performance to grow, especially when you’re working with a troupe of 14 people (or more!!!).
BG: It sounds like a powerful evolution. The timing of the New Moon release is perfect—it’s a season of new beginnings for everyone.
Marya: Exactly. It’s all about the timing and the magic.
BG: I’d love to dive deeper into the collaborative process between the dancers and ISIS. Often at festivals, you see DJs or bands accompanied by visual artists or dancers, but it isn’t always clear how much of that is a true collaboration versus a prepared routine set to someone else’s music. Take me into that room where the three of you began dreaming this up.
Marya: It really started with a phone conversation where we all brought forward the different “muse threads” and inspirations we were following in connection with the Samhain threshold. After that, the three of us met in person for a 45-minute divination session. I recorded the whole thing and took extensive notes to feed back to the group.
From that divination, I looked at my collection of songs and saw which ones were “pushing forward” for the show. I wrote a draft outline, which I then presented to Swan. She shared the four major pieces she was envisioning and the order she saw them in. Together, we wove those elements into an alchemical thread—finding the story we wanted to tell.
BG: Your enthusiasm for this project is incredible. I’ve seen Isis’s productions before, so I can only imagine the scale of it. For those who may not be familiar, you mentioned Samhain (pronounced sow-win). My own connection to that name is actually through the ’80s goth-punk band Samhain—Glenn Danzig’s project between the Misfits and Danzig—but for you, what is the deeper significance of this ritual day?
Marya: It’s funny you mention the band! I’d love to see those lyrics; I’m sure the root inspiration is the same. Samhain is a “cross-quarter” holiday, marking the transition between the equinox and the solstice around November 1st. It is a period when the “veils between the worlds” are said to be at their thinnest.
In Celtic and Druid traditions, this is the time of the final harvest—the end of the year and the beginning of a new cycle. People traditionally dressed in festive, spooky ways because, when the veil is thin, it’s hard to tell if a creature is of this world or the other. You’d put out jack-o’-lanterns and skeletons to “spook the spooks” and keep weird energies away from your door. But there is also a beautiful side to it, similar to Día de los Muertos, where you are “partying with the dead.” It’s a time for connecting with ancestors, where celebration and mourning go hand in hand at the final feast.
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BG: You mentioned that the performance at Bloom was just one part of a much larger ritual experience in Nevada City. How did that look in its full form?
Marya: Nevada City was the culmination of Isis’s week-long training for her Academy of Oracle Arts. Forty people came from all over the world to train, and our event was their final day.
We created a “Tree of Life” spread across the environment with ten different altars. Oracles interacted with the audience for the first hour, followed by forty women dressed as Black Madonnas performing an opening ritual spell. One of the most intense parts was a “King’s Sacrifice” ritual, representing the “composting of the patriarchy.” Swan performed a fierce piece with the Naginis and swords—a message of protection for the feminine—while a performer named Octavio was symbolically “sacrificed,” covered in marigolds, and reborn as an “awakened knight.” I’ve never been part of a ritual theater experience with sixty players like that. It was truly epic.
BG: You’ve spoken about the seasonal significance of this work. Beyond the “spooky” elements of the veil thinning, there’s a deeper communal aspect to Samhain that seems to ground this production.
Marya: My partner, Fajun, shared a beautiful tradition with me about this time of year. Historically, in the villages, they would put out the fire in every individual hearth. Then, everyone would gather at a central village fire to relight their own torches and carry that “flame of renewal” back home. It’s about resetting the cycle through kinship and community bonds before heading into winter.
That’s what we were trying to do with these “wild, ferocious forces” on stage. We explored the “Sisters of the Mystery”—the nine aspects of Venus or Ishtar who hold the gates between realms. I have a song on my upcoming album, Vase, that talks about preparing the temple space to enter that mythic layer. Swan’s choreography for it was inspired! she used these vivid, sharp shapes to symbolize opening those gates.
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BG: One of the most potent moments for me was hearing you tell the story of your experience in Greece, followed by the song “Uncover the Well.” It felt like a reclaiming of something stolen.
Marya: Exactly. That piece is about the well-spirits in Greece that were literally covered up with cement and built over by the Orthodox Church. It’s about liberating the “flowing divine feminine” and calling back the energy that was interrupted or ruptured.
Historically, there was a literal demonization of these spaces—an obsession with casting aspersions on the “dark arts” to make people fear them. It trivializes something deep into a plastic, Hallmark version of Halloween. At Samhain, we’re trying to blast through those obstacles. It’s about the “common people” reclaiming access to the oracle sites and the wisdom of the elemental world.
BG: It struck me that this is almost like a “life-sized, adult spiritual puppet show.” It uses archetypes and fables to instill values and humanity through art. It’s a theatrical universe, but it never gets in the way of the music. Puppet medicine; it’s an ambitious mission.
Marya: I love that you called it “puppet medicine.” There is an ancient magic in seeing these forces 0animated. Every woman in the troupe was wearing a costume she made with her own hands and consecrated in ritual preparation. Every object on stage was blessed in ceremony.
We played with stories of ancestral injury between the masculine and feminine—like the story of the young man who wakes up to supernatural power he can’t contain, leaves his beloved heartbroken, and runs into the wild. We are all walking around wounded and needing to learn how to hold the “protector” energy.
That’s why the Morrigan—the great raven—came at the end. Nine women with wings represented the primordial seer who can see through the dark nights when common observation fails. That energy lifts the prayer into other worlds.
BG: It feels less like a linear play and more like a kaleidoscope of imagery.
Marya: It’s definitely orbital and mythic rather than linear. I consider myself a “story box teller,” almost like a Scheherazade character. I could tell these stories with just my voice and a shaker, but I love the interdisciplinary multi-media arts—seeing how much a story can unfold and animate before collapsing back into a single note.
Working with Swan Sedona is a joy because she goes so hard for this. It’s a very precious type of village-tending and culture-building. It makes me incredibly happy to turn that kaleidoscope and hope the new image presses something meaningful into the audience’s imagination.
BG: It’s wonderful when you find a partner who shares that level of passion—someone dedicated to manifesting what’s in their heart into living, breathing art. It reminds me of the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont; there’s a real lineage of that kind of village-rooted storytelling.
Marya: Exactly. I’m thinking of those special moments where costuming, music, and archetypes all converge. It’s rooted in something very communal—even in a city.
BG: One Mardi Gras morning in NOLA, a local took me to see the Mardi Gras Indians at dawn. It’s unlike anything you can imagine; people sew those suits all year just for that one morning.
Marya: There is a specific type of devotion in that. It’s almost as if the artist is possessed by—or in collaboration with—the “other world” to bring these energies into a living embodiment. It feeds the community in a unique way. We see it in the attention to detail in an album, but when you combine it with movement, costume, and intent, it becomes a sacred offering.
I take the Bread and Puppet comparison as a huge compliment—I’m obsessed with them. I’ve built a few puppets and have more planned for the next year because these energies want to “play” with us. They have things to say and reminders to spark in us.
It actually reminds me of the Star Wars series, The Mandalorian. They built this five-million-dollar puppet for Grogu (Baby Yoda), and everyone on set was obsessed with it because it felt so alive. Who’s to say there isn’t some other-dimensional being that brought those people together to create that puppet just to shine something into the collective consciousness? I believe stories, songs, and certain puppets do exactly that. That’s what I hope to achieve with this work.
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BG: So what do you and Swan have coming up for this summer 2026?
Marya: We’re currently prepping for the next spiral in the She Rose World with the ‘Rose Of Resistance’ tour coming up in June. We’re currently building a mini-tour with a new cohort to bringing song, story, movement and ritual prayer to invoke the Resistance (thing shield maidens protecting the realm and breaking the silence.) With everything that has been unfolding this year on the global stage, bringing some ferocity and skillful defiance energy through the rose feels appropriate. Getting out our thorn medicine for this run.
as told to B.Getz
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SHE ROSE/BLACK ROSE dates & info, GO HERE