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.
MARTHA GRAHAMThe 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.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
You 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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The body says what words cannot.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM