Martha Graham Quotes

Dance is the hidden language of the soul

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.

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.

What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.

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.

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

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.

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. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others

The only sin is mediocrity.

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, the principles are the same. 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. 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.

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.

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

The unique must be fulfilled.

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.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is the time. It is just that others are behind the time.

I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man--the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.

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

Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

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

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and 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 be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. 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. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

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.

Misery is a communicable disease.

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

Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery

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

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!

She leaned down and smelled the skin at Connor's shoulders right at the spots where, as Martha Graham might have said, his own wings might have been attached.

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.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

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

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.

The body never lies." Martha Graham

Don't stand when you can sit; don't sit when you can lie down.

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

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 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. MARTHA GRAHAM

Nothing is more revealing than movement. The body says what words cannot.

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

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. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

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.

I LIKE WHAT THE DANCER MARTHA GRAHAM ONCE said, that each of us is unique and if we didn’t exist something in the world would have been lost. I wonder, then, why we are so quick to conform—and what the world has lost because we have. William Blake said about Jesus that he was “all virtue and acted from impulse, not from rules.” If we are to be like him, aren’t we to speak and move and do, to act upon the world and take new ground from the forces that work against our unique genius and beauty? What if part of God’s message to the world was you? The true and real you?

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

A vivid - if somewhat melodramatic - firsthand description of what deliberate practice can feel like comes from dancer Martha Graham: 'Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to the paradise of that 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.

Dancing is very like poetry.

I LIKE WHAT THE DANCER MARTHA GRAHAM ONCE said, that each of us is unique and if we didn’t exist something in the world would have been lost. I wonder, then, why we are so quick to conform—and what the world has lost because we have.

I never set out to create a technique. I started out on the floor to find myself, to find what the body could do, and what would give me satisfaction - emotionally, dramatically and bodily. But I did not ever dream of establishing a technique. I still can't believe anything like that happened.

Or in the words of Martha Graham, in her book, Blood Memory, “The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and your last garment; it’s what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor, and with joy and with fear as well. But always, though, with blessing.

„Никой човек на изкуството не изпреварва времето си. Той е своето време. Просто всички останали живеят в миналото.

I read somewhere that we never completely forget a thing, that there are the imprints of everything we’ve ever seen or done, all of these tiny details at the bottoms of our minds, like pebbles and weeds that never surface from a river bottom.

...a dancer dies twice—once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful.

The body never lies," Martha Graham.

real shrimps instead of the CrustaeSoy they got at Martha Graham,

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. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be. Martha said to me, very quietly: “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. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have so far used about one-third of your talent.” “But,” I said, “when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied.” “No artist is pleased.” “But then there is no satisfaction?” “No satisfaction whatever at any time,” she cried out passionately. “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

He’d snared a summer job at the Martha Graham library, going through old books and earmarking them for destruction while deciding which should remain on earth in digital form, but he lost this post halfway through its term because he couldn’t bear to throw anything out.

Martha Graham, speaking to dancers, could have been speaking to any artist, any writer: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening which 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.

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. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and m akes us more alive than the others.

Dance is the hidden language of the soul.

Great dancers are not great because of thei technique. They are great because of their passion.

They’re an idea of home, I think. Words are. It really is like opening a door, isn’t it, to open a book. If that’s not too sentimental to say. Books, words, stories are a kind of solace.

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

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. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ...

Of course one’s sense of identification with the nation is inflected by all kinds of particulars, including one’s class, race, gender, and sexual identification. … But [regarding] national character …, aside from references to a national aesthetic — literary, musical, and choreographic, there are two poles I reference: minimalist and maximalist. I love them both — the cryptic poems of Emily Dickinson folded up in tiny packets and hidden away in a box, the sparse, understated choreographies of Merce; but also the “trashy, profane and obscene” poems of Whitman and Ginsberg, [and] Martha Graham’s expressionism. I am, myself, a minimalist. But I love distortion guitar and the wild exhibitionism of so many American artists. Also, these divisions are false. Emily Dickinson, in fact, can be as trashy and obscene as the best of them! Anyway, Dickinson and Whitman are at the heart of this narrative. They are the Dancing Queen and the Guitar Hero.

There is a vitality, a life force, 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. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Jobs later explained, “We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same, it’s think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ‘Think differently’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.” In order to evoke the spirit of Dead Poets Society, Clow and Jobs wanted to get Robin Williams to read the narration. His agent said that Williams didn’t do ads, so Jobs tried to call him directly. He got through to Williams’s wife, who would not let him talk to the actor because she knew how persuasive he could be. They also considered Maya Angelou and Tom Hanks. At a fund-raising dinner featuring Bill Clinton that fall, Jobs pulled the president aside and asked him to telephone Hanks to talk him into it, but the president pocket-vetoed the request. They ended up with Richard Dreyfuss, who was a dedicated Apple fan. In addition to the television commercials, they created one of the most memorable print campaigns in history. Each ad featured a black-and-white portrait of an iconic historical figure with just the Apple logo and the words “Think Different” in the corner. Making it particularly engaging was that the faces were not captioned. Some of them—Einstein, Gandhi, Lennon, Dylan, Picasso, Edison, Chaplin, King—were easy to identify. But others caused people to pause, puzzle, and maybe ask a friend to put a name to the face: Martha Graham, Ansel Adams, Richard Feynman, Maria Callas, Frank Lloyd Wright, James Watson, Amelia Earhart. Most were Jobs’s personal heroes. They tended to be creative people who had taken risks, defied failure, and bet their career on doing things in a different way.

inchoate

She came down to my dorm that night, knocking on the door around nine o'clock. Martha was at the library, and I was eating graham crackers and reading 'Glamour'. She didn't wait for me to open the door but turned the knob herself and stepped inside. Seeing her in the threshold was both surprising and perfectly natural - since I'd left her classroom, my head had been pretty much continuously buzzing with pieces of my conversation, and her presence felt merely like the physical manifestation of what I'd already been imagining. "I'm not onterrupting, am I?" she said. I stopped chewing. "No." "Here's what I want." I could feel the energy coming off her body - she'd had an idea, she'd decided something, she'd walked briskly through the cold air across campus - and how it contrasted with my own inertia, my bad posture, the crumbs dusting the front of my shirt. I sat up straighter. "I want you to cut my hair, " she said. "I'll give you a grade for it. And that's how you can make up the paper. Whatever grade I give you for the haircut replaces the F". I looked at her and felt suddenly, extremely tired. "How's that for a deal?" she said.

She came down to my dorm that night, knocking on the door around nine o'clock. Martha was at the library, and I was eating graham crackers and reading 'Glamour'. She didn't wait for me to open the door but turned the knob herself and stepped inside. Seeing her in the threshold was both surprising and perfectly natural - since I'd left her classroom, my head had been pretty much continuously buzzing with pieces of my conversation, and her presence felt merely like the physical manifestation of what I'd already been imagining. "I'm not interrupting, am I?" she said. I stopped chewing. "No." "Here's what I want." I could feel the energy coming off her body - she'd had an idea, she'd decided something, she'd walked briskly through the cold air across campus - and how it contrasted with my own inertia, my bad posture, the crumbs dusting the front of my shirt. I sat up straighter. "I want you to cut my hair, " she said. "I'll give you a grade for it. And that's how you can make up the paper. Whatever grade I give you for the haircut replaces the F". I looked at her and felt suddenly, extremely tired. "How's that for a deal?" she said.

He went to the wedding at Cana as well as to the home of Mary and Martha when Lazarus died. He wept with those who wept and rejoiced with those who rejoiced.

Roger Martin of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management conducted a lengthy study of exceptional leaders stretching from Procter & Gamble’s then-CEO A. G. Lafley to choreographer Martha Graham and discovered that their ability to find solutions required holding conflicting perspectives and using that friction to synthesize a new idea. “The ability to face constructively the tension37 of opposing ideas,” Martin writes in his book The Opposable Mind, “. . . is the only way to address this kind of complexity.

I've never known anyone with the capacity for sugar that Adeena has. She'd demolished her waffles, which she'd drowned in syrup, and then ordered a slice of triple chocolate tuxedo pie, another sugar bomb. If I ate the way she'd did, I'd have lost a foot to diabetes by now. Martha slid our desserts in front of us, and Adeena and I hummed in appreciation after taking our first bites. The lemon icebox cake was cold and creamy, with a background sweetness and a whole lot of tang. As I often did when sampling delicious desserts, I tried to deconstruct what was in it. Graham crackers, cream cheese, whipped cream, and a ton of lemon curd seemed to be the basis of the recipe. Similar to the ginger calamansi pie I'd made, but simpler and no-bake, if I decided to buy the graham crackers instead of making my own. Definitely worth experimenting with, as I had a jar of calamansi curd tucked away in the fridge just begging to be used. I made a note on my phone later, maybe as a summer offering. As per usual when eating out, Adeena and I swapped plates so we could taste each other's desserts. "What do you think, girls?" I grinned at Martha. "Delicious. I love how the lemon cake is sweet and tangy, but you don't go too far in either direction." Adeena added, "It's the perfect counterpoint to my chocolate pie, which is divine, by the way. Rich, creamy, and so satisfying.

Soaking up the onstage elation, my mother kept touring with the Graham Company. She would go away, come home, and go away again. “I think my children are the most wonderful, the best looking, the smartest, and the most awe-inspiring children in the world,” she would recall. “Yet it is as though they are not connected to me. They come to see the show at a matinee wearing lovely clothes that I swear I have never seen before. They meet the cast, charm everyone and are whisked home to do whatever it is they do there. I think about taking them to dinner between shows, but somehow never get around to asking if this is all right. All right with whom? I am afraid to answer my own questions.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy...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... The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

We have what Martha Graham has called “blood memory” that transcends those things that can be put into words and must instead be understood in the marrow of the bones, the rhythm of the heart, the fullness of the womb. Pearl Cleage

What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.

There is a vitality, a life force, 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 be lost. 
The world will not have it. 
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. 
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. 
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.

Mrs. Martha Graham, who traveled to India in the early 1800s, discovered support for the Enlightenment’s belief that virtue was not synonymous with Christianity: “Everywhere in the ancient Hindu books we find the maxims of that pure and sound morality which is founded on the nature of man as a rational and social being.

1 The Anatomy of the Arts 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. —MARTHA GRAHAM, DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER

was as if hyperintelligent counterparts of Frank Gehry, Alex Calder, Dr. Seuss, and Martha Graham had gotten together, dropped a load of acid, and hit the drafting boards.

To me, the body says what words cannot. MARTHA GRAHAM, NEW YORK TIMES INTERVIEW, 1985

the dancer Martha Graham declared, “It takes about ten years to make a mature dancer.”6 More than a century ago, psychologists studying telegraph operators observed that reaching complete fluency in Morse code was rare because of the “many years of hard apprenticeship” required. How many years? “Our evidence,” the researchers concluded, “is that it requires ten years to make a thoroughly seasoned press dispatcher.”7

Emma, I want to tell you something about being right: being right is much harder than on a person than being wrong.

But I think I've learned a lesson and that is that you have to find your own answers on things. Even if they're wrong answers. The point is in the finding.

Maud (like my mother) thought food did a lot more than just fill you up.

In my mind I heard Father Freeman, his head bowed, announcing the punishment 'Say ten Hail Marys and go to the Hotel Paradise every summer for the remainder of your life.

if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.” —Martha Graham,

Emma, I want to tell you something about being right: being right is much harder on a person than being wrong.

This lack of internal body images became clear one day when she said, “Martha, what is jumping? I don’t understand.” Graham responded at once by calling one of her dancers, Merce Cunningham, to the barre and placing Keller’s hands on his waist. As Graham tells the story, “Merce jumped in the air in first position while Helen’s hands stayed on his body. Everyone in the studio was focused on this event, this movement. Her hands rose and fell as Merce did. Her expression changed from curiosity to one of joy. You could see the enthusiasm rise in her face as she threw her arms up in the air and exclaimed, ‘How like thought. How like the mind it is.

A lot of people go very Martha Graham when dancing on their enemies’ graves. Me, I like flamenco. I want the souls of the dead to feel it.