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.
MARTHA GRAHAMYou 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.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Stand up! Keep your backs straight! Remember that this is where the wings grow.
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 -
Discipline is liberation.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Misery is a communicable disease.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The unique must be fulfilled.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
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 -
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 -
The body says what words cannot.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Some of you are doomed to be artists.
MARTHA GRAHAM






