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 GRAHAMThere is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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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.
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Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it.
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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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No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
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Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
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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.
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What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
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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.
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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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The unique must be fulfilled.
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Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
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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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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
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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.
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Nothing is more revealing than movement.
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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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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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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.
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Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
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There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.
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The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
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Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.
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Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.
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Censorship is the height of vanity.
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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.
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It’s not my job to look beautiful. It’s my job to look interesting.
MARTHA GRAHAM