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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

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
Messengers
Dancer
Gods
Dancing
Dance
Choreography
Dancers

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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I'd rather an audience like me than dislike me, but I'd rather they disliked me than be apathetic, because that is the kiss of death.
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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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
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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.
Martha Graham
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What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
Martha Graham
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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
Martha Graham
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Fire is the test of gold adversity, of strong men.
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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Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
Martha Graham
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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
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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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I believe that we learn by practice.
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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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
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I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man--the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.
Martha Graham
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First we have to believe, and then we believe.
Martha Graham
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My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
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.
Martha Graham
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You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels - a leaf feels, a storm feels - what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it's a cultivated speech.
Martha Graham