Quote

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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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
Three
Dancing
Two
Memory
Back
Gave
Sometimes
Thousand
Years
Memories
Blood
Father
Mother
Stretches

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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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It's what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
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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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Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for -- liberation.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.
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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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Misery is a communicable disease.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.
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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
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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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'Age' is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.
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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.
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