The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.
MARTHA GRAHAMYou 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.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
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The body says what words cannot.
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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
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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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The world I’m interested in is the one where things are not named.
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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 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 body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
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What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.
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People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.
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Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for — liberation.
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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 -
Stand up! Keep your backs straight! Remember that this is where the wings grow.
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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.
MARTHA GRAHAM