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Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
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
Communication
Dance
Challenges
Speak
Inevitability
Great
Beautifully
Clearly
Dancing
Challenge
More quotes by 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
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
I'm asked so often whether I believe in life after death. I do believe in the sanctity of life, the continuity of life and of energy. I know the anonymity of death has no appeal for me. It is the now that I must face and want to face.
Martha Graham
I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies - bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.
Martha Graham
I want to make people feel intensely alive. I'd rather have them against me than indifferent.
Martha Graham
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.
Martha Graham
Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.
Martha Graham
...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
What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
Martha Graham
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
I believe that we learn by practice.
Martha Graham
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
I never thought of myself as being a genius. I don't know what genius is. I think a far better expression is a retriever, a lovely strong golden retriever that brings things back from the past, or retrieves things from our common blood memory
Martha Graham
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.
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
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
First we have to believe, and then we believe.
Martha Graham
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
You don't pick dance. Dance picks you.
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
