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Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

Martha Graham

What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Dedication Greatness Inspirational Passion
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

Cultivate Feeling Right Storm Technique Yourself
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
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
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
Some of you are doomed to be artists.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Artist Deep One Liner
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

Business Compare Determination Direction Expression Value Yourself
The world I’m interested in is the one where things are not named.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Interest Name Oneself World
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
The body says what words cannot.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Body One Liner Word
Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Inspirational Ourselves Perspective Start Wings
In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Art Breathe End One Liner
Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Country Dance Exception Freedom Mindset Modern Woman
The main thing, of course, always, is the fact that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost. Ambition is not enough; necessity is everything.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Ambition Enough Fact Fulfill Lost Necessary World Yourself
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Business People Thinking World Yourself
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
Misery is a communicable disease.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Communication Misery Sick
Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for — liberation.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Discipline Freedom Liberty Technique
Discipline is liberation.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Discipline Liberty One Liberty
I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies – bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Believe Discipline God Principle Technique Thinking Word
Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Beautiful Challenge Communication Dance Greatness Inevitable
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Art Body Creature Dance Instrument Yourself
Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Lying Movement Reading Soul State
The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Exception Freedom Secret
The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual – as we think so will we act.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Act Expression Thinking True
Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Body Dance Joy Pain Song
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

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

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Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

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More Martha Graham Quotes