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.
MARTHA GRAHAMDiscipline is liberation.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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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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When you start with an idea, or something hits you, then you have to follow that through to the end, and it’s the following through to the end that makes the pattern. That, for me, is choreography.
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What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.
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Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.
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Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it.
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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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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.
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Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for — liberation.
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Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.
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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 believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.
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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
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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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The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.
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You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.
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The main thing, of course, always, is the fact that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost. Ambition is not enough; necessity is everything.
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Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
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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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Discipline is liberation.
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The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.
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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
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No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
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The unique must be fulfilled.
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Misery is a communicable disease.
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Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
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Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
MARTHA GRAHAM