Martha Graham Quotes

When movement becomes ecstatic, then this is dance. When the movement is so total there is no ego, then it is dance.

when dancing is right, the movement possesss a logic common to us all, an inevitability that takes it beyond the personal and egocentric and makes of it classical art.

dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination.

Playwrights have texts, composers have scores, painters and sculptors have the residue of those activities, and dance is traditionally an ephemeral, effervescent, here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of thing.

It's one of my strongest dance pieces - having just done Play Without Words which was veering away from a lot of dance - I thought it would be nice to go back to something with almost the most dance I'd done.

Acting is a general thing; it's not like being a primary artist like a painter or writer which stands the test of time. I don't think acting stands the test of time, but it can capture the mood of the moment, which is in itself very exciting, but it rarely lasts.

I paint flowers so they will not die.

Theater is so wonderful and brilliant but it lasts very much in the moment. It's there and then it's gone.

Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated.

But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises. In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing, and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door. This is the precise difference between dancing and acrobatics. The dancer tries to express something; the acrobat merely pulls, raises, stretches and grinds. The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.

Man has used human rhythmic movement as raw material out of which to create works of art, as the composer of music uses sound, the sculptor uses stone and wood, the painter his pigments, and the writer - words.

Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.

I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.

Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

For poems are like rainbows; they escape you quickly.

The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing... there are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer's justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art.

The ephemeral nature of live performance is the part I love most - it's a monk's sand painting, carefully constructed, then wiped away in an instant.

I am for an art of things lost or thrown away. . . I am for an art that one smokes like a cigarette. . . I am for an art that flutters like a flag.

Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.

Art is long, and critics are the insects of a day.

Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory.

That you are not already golden word in our streets Already memories Your love fades Already Whether you are no longer to have perished.

We can see the film stars of yesterday in yesterday’s films, hear the voices of poest and singers on a record, keep the plays of dead dramatists upon our bookshelves, but the actor who holds his audience captive for one brief moment upon a lighted stage vanishes forever when the curtain falls.

Ah, if you could dance all that you've just said, then I'd understand.

When you shake you ass, they notice fast. And some mistakes were built to last.