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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
Clearly
Compares
Determine
Quickening
Valuable
Unrest
Expression
Expressions
Open
Channel
Business
Vitality
Keep
Directly
Good
Compare

More quotes by Martha Graham

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I want to make people feel intensely alive. I'd rather have them against me than indifferent.
Martha Graham
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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
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The center of the stage is where I am.
Martha Graham
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Theater used to be a verb it used to be an act. But nowadays it is just a noun. It is a place.
Martha Graham
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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
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Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for -- liberation.
Martha Graham
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Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
Martha Graham
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First we have to believe, and then we believe.
Martha Graham
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When you start with an idea, or something hits you, then you have to follow that through to the end, and it's the following through to the end that makes the pattern. That, for me, is choreography.
Martha Graham
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Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
Martha Graham
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Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.
Martha Graham
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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.
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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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
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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.
Martha Graham
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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
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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
Martha Graham
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Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.
Martha Graham
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We are all of us, unique - each a unique pattern of creativity and if we do not fulfill it, it is lost for all time.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham