Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.
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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The world I’m interested in is the one where things are not named.
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The center of the stage is where I am.
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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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Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
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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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The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.
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The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual – as we think so will we act.
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In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.
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I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover – the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.
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You don’t pick dance. Dance picks you.
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Dance is the hidden language of the soul, of the body.
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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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The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.
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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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No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
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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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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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Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.
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A 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.
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I want to make people feel intensely alive. I’d rather have them against me than indifferent.
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Censorship is the height of vanity.
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Stand up! Keep your backs straight! Remember that this is where the wings grow.
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We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.
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Repetition not for monotony but the ecstasy it induces.
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What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
MARTHA GRAHAM