Martha Graham Quotes

I did a masterclass at the Juilliard and asked the students, 'Can you stand?' 'Sure.' 'Can you walk?' 'Sure.' They couldn't. They had never really thought about it.

I like to say, 'Once a dancer, always a dancer.' In everything - the way you walk, the way you move, the way you talk, the way you sit - everything is just, you've been trained a certain way your whole life, so it's a bit muscle memory.

All dancers are, by and large, a photographer's dream. They communicate with their bodies and they are trained to be completely responsive to a collaborative situation.

Ironically, we are all too often educated out of rather than in to an awareness of the body.

Wth subtly developed body awareness, it is possible for the individual to become the conscious orchestrator of health.

Self-awareness includes awareness of your body.

Being a former dancer, classical dancer, it informed me as a human being just in terms of the grace I guess. Ballet is a very graceful form of art. You also become very aware of your body and your mind and your body is working in conjunction. That kind of helps you in acting as well. It's not only using your mind, it's like making your mind communicate this character into your body so that you can bring it to life and physicalize it.

Ritual is important to us as human beings. It ties us to our traditions and our histories.

Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

I am fairly physically aware and agile, and I imbue that into the characters I play.

My parents were ballet dancers, and I did a lot of ballet, too, so I think I learned quite early on how to hold my body. Although I do recall desperately wishing I was shorter at school.

I was shy at dancing. I practice at home. I was practicing in the mirror. Dancing everywhere. Then I just started feeling good. I started feeling coordinated. I started feeling the music better.

Pure dance form is not dying.

When you get your shoes for the character, no matter what you had planned, as far as how you're gonna move, all of a sudden, you get a certain kind of feedback, in how you connect to the earth and you have to incorporate that.

You have to work with your body when you dance; you can't shy away from your physicality. For me, it's really linked to an incandescent way of accepting yourself and projecting. The dancing was at the core from the beginning.

The Italians - they cannot talk without shaking the hands. And I am like that, I'm from Brazil as well.

The most important thing to me is, how, in the process of learning how to use my body, can I come to understand myself ?

Men ought to become more conscious of their bodies as objects of delight.

There are many good forms of meditation practice. A good meditation practice is any one that develops awareness or mindfulness of our body and our sense, of our mind and heart.

Ninety percent of the people don't realize that there is anything below the head. They think that the head is carried around by something very mysterious, and they're not aware that it's the body, something they should be in tune with.

I realize that once I stopped fighting the technical process of how to move my body, I made it choreography.

One cannot understand the rhythms and meanings of the outer world until one has mastered the dialects of the body.

My kingdom for a more embodied body

Body adornments show that we're aware of our bodies and expect others to be aware as well.

Refine your senses a little more each day; stretch them...your awareness will pierce deeply into your body and into the world.