Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
MARTHA GRAHAMEvery dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
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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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Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.
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The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.
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It’s not my job to look beautiful. It’s my job to look interesting.
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Discipline is liberation.
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The center of the stage is where I am.
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I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
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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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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 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.
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Nothing is more revealing than movement.
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Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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 GRAHAM -
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.
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Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
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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 spine is the tree of life. Respect it.
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My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
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Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for — liberation.
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I believe that we learn by practice… it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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 body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.
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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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM