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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.

Martha Graham

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Martha Graham
Age: 96 †
Born: 1894
Born: May 11
Died: 1991
Died: April 1
Artist
Ballet Dancer
Ballet Master
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Dancer
Music Pedagogue
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Martha Grehem
Keep
Directly
Good
Compare
Clearly
Compares
Determine
Quickening
Valuable
Unrest
Expression
Expressions
Open
Channel
Business
Vitality

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Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.
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The body says what words cannot.
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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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One can always lament, you know — but to laugh in the face of life, that's very hard. And for me the great tragedian should also be a great comedian.
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Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
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Misery is a communicable disease.
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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 of time, this expression is unique.
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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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You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being.
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...Although, as the Latin verb to educate, educate, indicates, it is not a question of putting something in but drawing it out, if it is there to begin with...I want all of my students and all of my dancers to be aware of the poignancy of life at that moment. I would like to feel that I had, in some way, given them the gift of themselves.
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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. The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived ... the human body.
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Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.
Martha Graham
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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
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Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.
Martha Graham
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Dance is the landscape of man's soul.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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Sometimes it's blood memory... not the blood your mother and father gave you... but that which stretches back two or three thousand years.
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I believe that we learn by practice.
Martha Graham
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You give all your life to doing this one thing. It sounds grim, it sounds frightening - it isn't - it has a great gaiety at times and a great wonder.
Martha Graham