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A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won’t settle for anything less.

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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Evitable Fear Happiness Intense Life
In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Art Breathe End One Liner
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Art Body Creature Dance Instrument Yourself
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

Choice Dance Life People Yourself
It’s not my job to look beautiful. It’s my job to look interesting.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Beautiful Interest Job Myself
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Bone Dance Day Hard People Start Work Yourself
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

Dance Essence Expression Feeling Hope Human Myself Soul Wonderful
The center of the stage is where I am.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Artist Attention Myself Place Stage
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Artist Himself Time
The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual – as we think so will we act.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Act Expression Thinking True
There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Action Block Force Quick Translation World Yourself
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

Believe Dedication Intellectual Learning Oneself Performance Practice Satisfaction Spirit
My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Life Literature Movement
The body says what words cannot.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Body One Liner Word
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

Art Hope Myself Thinking Threat
Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Meaning Movement Passion Technique

A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won’t settle for anything less.

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A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won’t settle for anything less.

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Popular Authors

More Martha Graham Quotes