There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
MARTHA GRAHAMIn a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.
More Martha Graham Quotes
-
-
I don’t think in art there is ever a precedent; each moment is a new one and terrifying and threatening and bursting with hope.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual – as we think so will we act.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I believe that we learn by practice… it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The center of the stage is where I am.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Misery is a communicable disease.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The body says what words cannot.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
You don’t pick dance. Dance picks you.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won’t settle for anything less.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Discipline is liberation.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover – the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.
MARTHA GRAHAM