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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

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

Dance Dedication Greatness Inspirational Passion
The unique must be fulfilled.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Fulfillment One Liner Unique
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
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
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
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
What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Aware Light Myself Sun
Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Desire Face Faith Invitation Obstacle Perfection Performance Practice Vision
The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Life One Liner Respect Tree
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
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
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
Repetition not for monotony but the ecstasy it induces.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Boredom Happiness Repeat
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Martha Graham Quotes