words from a great dancer. (142/365)

Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991)

• All things I do are in every woman. Every woman is Medea. Every woman is Jocasta. There comes a time when a woman is a mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills.

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

• The body is a sacred garment.

• 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 be lost.

• The body says what words cannot.

• Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.

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

• Dance is the hidden language of the soul.

• Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.

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

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

• 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. There is a great deal of outer space, distant from our daily lives, where I feel our imagination wanders sometimes. It will find a planet or it will not find a planet, and that is what a dancer does.

from Selected Martha Graham Quotations