Martha Graham Quotes

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

Remember that you are unique. If that is not fulfilled, then something wonderful has been lost.

The body says what words cannot.

Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.

The body is a sacred garment. It's your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well.

Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.

Misery is a communicable disease.

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.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.

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

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

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.

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 time, this expression is unique.

Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.

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.

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.

Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.

Looking at the past is like lolling in a rocking chair.

It is so relaxing and you can rock back and forth on the porch, and never go forward.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

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.

The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.

Modern dance isn't anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.

'Age' is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.

Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for -- liberation.

Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.

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.

You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.

There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.

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.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.

The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.

You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.

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.

The body is a sacred garment.

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.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well.

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.

If you feel depressed you shouldn't go out on the street because it will show on your face and you'll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.

Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.

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.

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. I don't leap and jump anymore. I look at young dancers, and I am envious, more aware of what glories the body contains. But sensitivity is not made dull by age.

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.

Nothing is more revealing than movement.

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.

To me, a building - if it's beautiful - is the love of one man, he's made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.