Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
MARTHA GRAHAMDance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
MARTHA GRAHAMDance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.
MARTHA GRAHAMThe 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 GRAHAMNo animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
MARTHA GRAHAMWherever a dancer stands is holy ground.
MARTHA GRAHAMDiscipline is liberation.
MARTHA GRAHAMPractice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
MARTHA GRAHAMStand up! Keep your backs straight! Remember that this is where the wings grow.
MARTHA GRAHAMModern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
MARTHA GRAHAMA dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won’t settle for anything less.
MARTHA GRAHAMThe 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 GRAHAMNo 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 GRAHAMI get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
MARTHA GRAHAMI 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 GRAHAMThe center of the stage is where I am.
MARTHA GRAHAMIt’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
MARTHA GRAHAM