Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
MARTHA GRAHAMSome men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Stand up! Keep your backs straight! Remember that this is where the wings grow.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
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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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I’d rather an audience like me than dislike me, but I’d rather they disliked me than be apathetic, because that is the kiss of death.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man–the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.
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Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
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No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
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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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The center of the stage is where I am.
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My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The world I’m interested in is the one where things are not named.
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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.
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 -
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.
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Some of you are doomed to be artists.
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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.
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Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
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You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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 -
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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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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 -
Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer’s art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories–when his dancing days are over.
MARTHA GRAHAM