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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.

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
Awareness
Results
Become
Body
Burmese
Human
Eastern
Humans
Dancer
Function
Dance

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There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep.
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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.
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Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.
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The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted.
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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.
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The center of the stage is where I am.
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Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
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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.
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Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
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What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
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What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
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Fire is the test of gold adversity, of strong men.
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Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
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You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.
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The body says what words cannot.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I love words very much. I've always loved to talk, and I've always love words — the words that rest in your mouth, what words mean and how you taste them and so on. And for me the spoken word can be used almost as a gesture.
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