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The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.

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
Dancing
Except
Secret
Everything

More quotes by Martha Graham

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I don't try to tell the dancers exactly what a dance means before they do it.
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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
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Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
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Misery is a communicable disease.
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The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.
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You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.
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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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Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.
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The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted.
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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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Discipline is liberation.
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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.
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'Age' is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.
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Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.
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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
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The main thing, of course, always, is the fact that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost. Ambition is not enough necessity is everything.
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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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...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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The unique must be fulfilled.
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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.
Martha Graham