black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.

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

Body Life Respect Sacred Treat Yourself
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
Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Beautiful Challenge Communication Dance Greatness Inevitable
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
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Care Dance Greatness Inspirational Passion
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

Important Live Moments Notice Time Worth
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Adversity Fire Gold Man Test
I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover – the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Connection Discover Earth Heaven Law Lying Movement
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

Believe Direction Motivational Open Willing Work Yourself
The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Death Live Ourselves Past People Time
Some of you are doomed to be artists.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Artist Deep One Liner
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

Dance End Ideas Myself Pattern Start
What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Aware Light Myself Sun
The center of the stage is where I am.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Artist Attention Myself Place Stage
It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Fun Joy Laughter Myself
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

Art Dance Essential Exception Live Memories Movement Photograph
Dance is the hidden language of the soul, of the body.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Body Dance Hide Language
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Affirmation Aware Dance Function Live Mystery Wonderful
Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Acceptance Age Glory Maturity Time
Discipline is liberation.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Discipline Liberty One Liberty
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
Misery is a communicable disease.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Communication Misery Sick
No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Animal Body Human See Ugly
Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Art Eternity Forever Man Soul
My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Children Darkness Time
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

Alive Artist Divine Satisfaction Strange Time
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Body Celebration Dance Growth Hands Mirror Thinking Time Way Yourself

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Martha Graham Quotes