I want to make people feel intensely alive. I’d rather have them against me than indifferent.
MARTHA GRAHAMDance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.
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Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for — liberation.
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Repetition not for monotony but the ecstasy it induces.
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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.
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Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
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We are all of us, unique – each a unique pattern of creativity and if we do not fulfill it, it is lost for all time.
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No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
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Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.
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It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
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Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.
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I’d rather an audience like me than dislike me, but I’d rather they disliked me than be apathetic, because that is the kiss of death.
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Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
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Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.
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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.
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The unique must be fulfilled.
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Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.
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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.
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Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
You don’t pick dance. Dance picks you.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The center of the stage is where I am.
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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.
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The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
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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.
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Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.
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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
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Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
MARTHA GRAHAM