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You don't pick dance. Dance picks you.

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
Pick
Picks
Dance

More quotes by Martha Graham

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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.
Martha Graham
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I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can't stop.
Martha Graham
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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
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Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for -- liberation.
Martha Graham
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In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
Martha Graham
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I want to make people feel intensely alive. I'd rather have them against me than indifferent.
Martha Graham
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I don't try to tell the dancers exactly what a dance means before they do it.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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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
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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.
Martha Graham
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Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
Martha Graham
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The center of the stage is where I am.
Martha Graham
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Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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The unique must be fulfilled.
Martha Graham
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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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First we have to believe, and then we believe.
Martha Graham