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 GRAHAMThink 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.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
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Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
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Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
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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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The center of the stage is where I am.
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I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.
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What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
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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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It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
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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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The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual – as we think so will we act.
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What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
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Dance is the hidden language of the soul, of the body.
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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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Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
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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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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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In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.
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Repetition not for monotony but the ecstasy it induces.
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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.
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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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No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
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I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
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Some of you are doomed to be artists.
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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