I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination.
MARTHA GRAHAMThere is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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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.
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Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.
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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.
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 -
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 GRAHAM -
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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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The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.
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Some of you are doomed to be artists.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
If you feel depressed you shouldn’t go out on the street because it will show on your face and you’ll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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 -
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.
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Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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 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.
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 -
It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The body says what words cannot.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
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 -
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM