Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Earth
Lies
Able
Line
Never
Movement
Lines
Perpendicular
Law
Posture
Heaven
Connecting
Lying
Discover
Certain
Dance

More quotes by Martha Graham

Image
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
Image
Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
Martha Graham
Image
The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.
Martha Graham
Image
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
Image
You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.
Martha Graham
Image
I believe that we learn by practice.
Martha Graham
Image
I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
Martha Graham
Image
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
Image
You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.
Martha Graham
Image
You don't pick dance. Dance picks you.
Martha Graham
Image
What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
Martha Graham
Image
First we have to believe, and then we believe.
Martha Graham
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Martha Graham
Image
...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
Image
Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
Martha Graham