Martha Graham Quotes about Dance - Page 2

Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.

Nothing is more revealing than movement.

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.

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.

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.

Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

It's what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.

I've relaxed my feelings about other companies performing my works. I have never in principle been against my ballets being danced by other companies. Rather, it is that we lack the time, space and money to insure that they are done well. To me, the only sin is mediocrity.

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

If I can't dance, I don't care if my dances are ever done again!

We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep.

I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.

The world I'm interested in is the one where things are not named.

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.

The body is a sacred garment.

It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.

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.

You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.

Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.

I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.

Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer's art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories--when his dancing days are over.

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.

Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery - what it all means, the way the little bone near the ankle relates itself to the floor for a perfect stance, a perfect plie.