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.
MARTHA GRAHAMEvery dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
More Martha Graham Quotes
-
-
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The center of the stage is where I am.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The world I’m interested in is the one where things are not named.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Discipline is liberation.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
It’s not my job to look beautiful. It’s my job to look interesting.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Dance is the landscape of man’s soul.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
The body says what words cannot.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
MARTHA GRAHAM -
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM