Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Grahamwas an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence of Picasso on modern visual arts, the influence of Stravinsky on music, and the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright on architecture...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChoreographer
Date of Birth11 May 1894
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
beautiful believe mean
I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies - bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.
dance world
The world I'm interested in is the one where things are not named.
life giving sound
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.
dance care done
If I can't dance, I don't care if my dances are ever done again!
dance memories essence
It is difficult to see the great dance effects as they happen, to see them accurately, catch them fast in memory. It is even more difficult to verbalize them for critical discussion. The particular essence of a performance, its human sweep of articulate rhythm in space and in time has no specific terminology to describe it by.
beautiful jobs interesting
It's not my job to look beautiful. It's my job to look interesting.
dance emotional discipline
To me, this acquirement of nervous, physical, and emotional concentration is the one element possessed to the highest degree by the truly great dancers of the world. Its acquirement is the result of discipline, of energy in the deep sense. That is why there are so few great dancers.
pity
Pity is a corroding thing.
dance two wish
A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance.
storm speech technique
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.
dance fall dancing
I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
repetition monotony ecstasy
Repetition not for monotony but the ecstasy it induces.
passion dancer technique
What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
discipline liberation
Discipline is liberation.