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Quotes by Martha
Graham
”The body says what
words
cannot.”
- Martha
Graham
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”Great dancers are not
great because of their
technique,
they are great because
of their passion.”
- Martha
Graham
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”To learn to dance by
practicing
dancing
or to learn to live by practicing
living,
the principles are the
same.”
- Martha
Graham
”It's what I always wanted to
do:
to show the laughter,
the fun – the joy of dance.”
- Martha Graham
”Wherever a dancer
stands is holy ground.”
- Martha
Graham
”You are unique, and if
that is not
fulfilled,
then something has been
lost.”
- Martha
Graham
”Movement never
lies.
It is a barometer telling the
state of the
soul's weather to all
who can read it.”
- Martha Graham
”Some men have thousands
of reasons
why
they cannot do what they want
to,
when all they need is
one reason why they can.”
- Martha
Graham
”Dance is communication, and so the
great challenge
is to speak clearly,
beautifully, and with inevitability.”
- Martha
Graham
”Dance is the hidden
language of the soul.”
- Martha
Graham
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”Fire is the test of
gold; adversity, of strong men.”
- Martha
Graham
”First we have to
believe, and then we
believe.”
- Martha
Graham
”Freedom to a dancer
means discipline.
That is what technique
is for – liberation.”
- Martha
Graham
”You see, when weaving a
blanket,
an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the
weaving of that blanket
to let the soul
out.”
- Martha Graham
"No artist is ahead of his
time.
He is time; the others are just
behind the times."
- Martha
Graham
”Dancing appears
glamorous, easy,
delightful.
But the path to paradise of the
achievement is not
easier than any
other.
There is fatigue so great that the body
cries, even in its sleep.
There are
times of complete frustration,
there are daily small
deaths.”
- Martha
Graham
“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
”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
”A building – if it's
beautiful – is the love of one
man,
he's made it out of his
love for space, materials, things like that.”
- Martha
Graham
”A dancer, more than any
other human being, dies two
deaths:
the first, the physical when the
powerfully trained body
will no longer respond as you would
wish.
After all, I choreographed for
myself.
I never choreographed what I could not
do.
I changed steps in Medea and other
ballets to accommodate the change.
But I knew. And it haunted
me.
I only wanted to
dance.”
- Martha
Graham
”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
”Dancers today can do
anything; the technique is
phenomenal.
The passion and the
meaning to their movement can be another thing.”
- Martha
Graham
”Dancing is just
discovery, discovery, discovery.”
- Martha
Graham
”Every dance is kind of
a fever chart, a graph of the heart.”
- Martha
Graham
”I did not want to be a
tree, a flower or a
wave.
In a dancer's body, we as audience must
see ourselves,
not the imitated behavior of everyday
actions,
not the phenomenon of
nature, not exotic creatures from another
planet,
but something of the
miracle that is a human being.”
- Martha
Graham
”If I can't
dance,
I don't care if my
dances are ever done again!”
- Martha
Graham
”It is difficult to see
the great dance effects as they
happen,
to see them accurately, catch them fast
in memory.
It is even more difficult to verbalize
them for critical discussion.
The particular essence of a performance,
its human sweep
of articulate rhythm in space and in
time
has no specific
terminology to describe it by.”
- Martha
Graham
”It takes ten years,
usually, to make a
dancer.
It takes ten years of handling the
instrument,
handling the material with which you are
dealing,
for you to know it
completely.”
- Martha
Graham
”Learn by
practice.”
- 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
”Nothing is more
revealing than movement.”
- 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.”
- Martha
Graham
”Theater is a verb
before it is a noun...”
- Martha
Graham
”The spine is the tree
of life. Respect
it.”
- Martha
Graham
”The world I'm
interested in is the one where things are not
named.”
- Martha
Graham
”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.”
- Martha
Graham
”Think of the magic of
that foot... upon which your whole weight
rests.
It’s a miracle and the
dance...is a celebration of that miracle.”
- Martha
Graham
”To me, this acquirement
of nervous, physical, and emotional
concentration
is the one element possessed to the
highest degree
by the truly great
dancers of the world.
Its acquirement is the result of
discipline,
of energy in the deep
sense.
That is why there are so
few great dancers.”
- Martha
Graham
”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
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.”
- Martha
Graham
“It is difficult to see
the great dance effects as they
happen,
to see them accurately,
catch them
fast in
memory.
It is even more
difficult to verbalize them for critical
discussion.
The particular essence
of a
performance,
its human sweep of
articulate rhythm in space and in
time
has no
specific terminology to describe
it by.”
- Martha
Graham
”I am a
dancer. I believe that
we learn by practice.
Whether it means to learn to dance by
practicing dancing
or to learn to live by
practicing living....
In each it is the performance of a
dedicated precise
set of acts, physical or
intellectual,
from which comes shape
of achievement,
a sense of one's
being, a satisfaction of
spirit.
One becomes in some area
an athlete of God.”
- Martha
Graham
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