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 GRAHAMThe spine is the tree of life. Respect it.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.
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Censorship is the height of vanity.
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Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for — liberation.
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Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
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You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels – a leaf feels, a storm feels – what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it’s a cultivated speech.
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Dance is the landscape of man’s soul.
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It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
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What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
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There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.
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I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.
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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.
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Dance is the hidden language of the soul, of the body.
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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.
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You don’t pick dance. Dance picks you.
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The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.
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No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
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I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies – bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.
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My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
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I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.
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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.
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My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.
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The world I’m interested in is the one where things are not named.
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The unique must be fulfilled.
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Discipline is liberation.
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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.
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You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.
MARTHA GRAHAM