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Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.

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

Age Dance Live Magic Performance Reason
The unique must be fulfilled.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Fulfillment One Liner Unique
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

Body Dance Listening Movement Myself Necessary Pay Terrible
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Artist Himself Time
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Exposure Movement Reveal
I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Fall Inspirational Myself
Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Art Eternity Forever Man Soul
My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Children Darkness Time
It’s not my job to look beautiful. It’s my job to look interesting.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Beautiful Interest Job Myself
My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Life Literature Movement
I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies – bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Believe Discipline God Principle Technique Thinking Word
Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance God Message
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Bone Dance Day Hard People Start Work Yourself
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

Desire Face Faith Invitation Obstacle Perfection Performance Practice Vision
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

Body Life Respect Sacred Treat Yourself
What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Aware Light Myself Sun
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

Dance Evitable Fear Happiness Intense Life
Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Lying Movement Reading Soul State
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

Body Celebration Dance Growth Hands Mirror Thinking Time Way Yourself
Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Beautiful Challenge Communication Dance Greatness Inevitable
I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Believe Day Future Myself Past Time
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Area Athlete Dance God Learning Live Oneself Practice
No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Animal Body Human See Ugly
Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for — liberation.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Discipline Freedom Liberty Technique
Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Country Dance Exception Freedom Mindset Modern Woman
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Connection Discover Earth Heaven Law Lying Movement
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

Action Block Force Quick Translation World Yourself

Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.

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Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.

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