Famous Quotes & Sayings

Martha Graham

A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won't settle for anything less.

Martha Graham

I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.

Martha Graham

My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.

Martha Graham

The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.

Martha Graham

Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.

Martha Graham

Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery

Martha Graham

I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover - the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.

Martha Graham

Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to paradise of the 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.

Martha Graham

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...

Martha Graham

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

Martha Graham

Stand up! Keep your backs straight! Remember that this is where the wings grow.

Martha Graham

The body says what words cannot.

Martha Graham

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

Martha Graham

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.

Martha Graham

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.

Martha Graham

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

Martha Graham

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, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Martha Graham

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

Mary Schmich

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Mark Morris

I want people to look like people when they're dancing.

Muhammad Ali

I run on the road long before I dance under the lights.

Mae West

Come up and see me sometime.

Liza Minnelli

Bleeding feet will bond us.

Michael Jackson

On the brilliance of James Brown's dancing − and the frustrations of bad camera-work on dancers:cers: I think James Brown is a genius you know when he's with the Famous Flames, unbelievable. I used to watch him on television and I used to get angry at the camera-man because whenever he would really start to dance they would be on a close-up so I couldn't see his feet. I'd shout "Show him! Show him!", so I could watch and learn.

Michael Jackson

I love the whole world of dance, because dancing is really the emotions through bodily movement. And however you feel, you just bring out the inner feeling through your mood...people don't think about the importance of it.

Michael Jackson

On many occasions when I am dancing I've felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists !

Michael Jackson

Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred.In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists.

Michael Jackson

My goal in life is to give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance.

Michael Jackson

I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing then it is the eternal dance or creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing...and dancing...and dancing. Until there is only...the dance.

Mia Hamm

If you've got hips, you can't be a gymnast or dancer. That ruled me out.

Michel De Certeau

When he grew old, Aristotle, who is not generally considered a tightrope dancer, liked to lose himself in the most labyrinthine and subtle of discourses […]. ‘The more solitary and isolated I become, the more I come to like stories,’ he said.

Mark Twain

I had longed to be a butterfly, and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkaed and schoisched with a step peculiar to myself - and the kangaroo.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important.