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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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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
Less
Pay
Homage
Anything
Behinds
Settle
Body
Listen
Settling
Must
Behind
Dancer
Terrible
Necessity
Movement
Driving
Passion
Dance
Lying
Lies

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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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My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
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I believe that we learn by practice.
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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.
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Some of you are doomed to be artists.
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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.
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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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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.
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Misery is a communicable disease.
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What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
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I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can't stop.
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There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep.
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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
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I believe that we learn by practice... it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit.
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Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
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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.
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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.
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The past is not dead it is not even past. People live on inner time the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.
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You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.
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Fire is the test of gold adversity, of strong men.
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