Martha Graham Quotes
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I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of mankind - the landscape of the human soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human being can be.
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I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do. 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.
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I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination.
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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. Then I need all the comfort that practice has stored in my memory, a tenacity of faith.
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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.
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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.
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Misery is a communicable disease.
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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.
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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 time, this expression is unique.
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The body is a sacred garment.
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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 never lies.
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The only sin is mediocrity.
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Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
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Dancing is very like poetry. It's like poetic lyricism, sometimes, it's like the rawness of dramatic poetry, it's like the terror - or it can be like a terrible revelation of meaning. Because when you light on a word it strikes you to your heart.
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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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The body says what words cannot.
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Censorship is the height of vanity.
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No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
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Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
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Many times I hear the phrase 'the dance of life'. It is an expression that touches me deeply, for the instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived - the human body.
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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.
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Nothing is more revealing than movement.
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The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.