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.
MARTHA GRAHAMNo animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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It’s not my job to look beautiful. It’s my job to look interesting.
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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.
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No 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.
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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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The unique must be fulfilled.
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You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.
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Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
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Nothing is more revealing than movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
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Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.
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What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.
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The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
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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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Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual – as we think so will we act.
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Repetition not for monotony but the ecstasy it induces.
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Dance is the hidden language of the soul, of the body.
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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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
If you feel depressed you shouldn’t go out on the street because it will show on your face and you’ll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.
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Censorship is the height of vanity.
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I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
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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.
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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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What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
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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.
MARTHA GRAHAM