Martha Graham Quotes

My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.

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

Theater used to be a verb; it used to be an act. But nowadays it is just a noun. It is a place.

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. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

Sometimes it's blood memory ... not the blood your mother and father gave you ... but that which stretches back two or three thousand years.

At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!

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.

A dancer isn't great because of their technique ... they're great because of their passion.

Learn by practice.

Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to,
when all they need is one reason why they can

Pity is a corroding thing.

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

Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

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

You don't pick dance. Dance picks you.

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.

There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

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

The unique must be fulfilled.

You give all your life to doing this one thing. It sounds grim, it sounds frightening - it isn't - it has a great gaiety at times and a great wonder.

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

I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.

No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.

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.

The body is a sacred garment.

Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.

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.

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

Dancing is very like poetry.

I have heard stories that it was love at first sight for both of us, that we disappeared to a guest room at Merle's house, had our meals sent up, and didn't emerge for several days. This is absolutely untrue. I would never behave like that as a guest in someone's home. Carlos and I went to my beach house.

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

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.

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.

All things I do are in every woman. Every woman is Medea. Every woman is Jocasta. There comes a time when a woman is a mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills.

What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.

It takes about ten years to make a mature dancer. The training is twofold. There is the study and practice of the craft in order to strengthen the muscular structure of the body. The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted. The movement become clean, precise, eloquent, truthful. Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. This might be called the law of the dancer's life, the law which governs its outer aspects

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 a dancer. I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living ... In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.

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.

It takes at least five years of rigorous training to be spontaneous.

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

Dance is the hidden language of the soul

How many leaps did Nijinksy take before he made the one that startled the world? He took thousands and thousands and it is that legend that gives us the courage, the energy, and arrogance to go back into the studio knowing that while there is so little time to be born to the instant, you will work again among the many that you may once more be born as one. That is a dancer's world.

I don't think in Art there is ever a precedent; each moment is a new one & terrifying & threatening & bursting with hope.

There is a fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration; there are daily small deaths.

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.

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.

Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.

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

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.

The body never lies.

One can always lament, you know - but to laugh in the face of life, that's very hard. And for me the great tragedian should also be a great comedian.

I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do.

Censorship is the height of vanity.

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

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.

Discipline is liberation.

The body never lies."
Martha Graham

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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.

To me, the body says what words cannot. I believe that dance was the first art.

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

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

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

The only sin is mediocrity.

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

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.

You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels - a leaf feels, a storm feels - what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it's a cultivated speech.

The center of the stage is where I am.

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

Think of the magic of the foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.

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

Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.

I want to make people feel intensely alive. I'd rather have them against me than indifferent.

Misery is a communicable disease.

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.

The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual - as we think so will we act.

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

I believe that dance was the first art. A philosopher has said that dance and architecture were the first arts. I believe that dance was first because it's gesture, it's communication. That doesn't mean it's telling a story, but it means it's communicating a feeling, a sensation to people.

Nothing is more revealing than movement.

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

The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.