Martha Graham (1894 – 1991)
American dancer and choreographer regarded as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance, and is widely considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
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. 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.
To practice means to perform, in the face of all obstacles some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
The body is shaped, disciplined, honoured, and in time, trusted. The movement becomes clean, precise, eloquent, truthful. Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. This might be called the law of the dancer's life the law which governs the outer aspects.
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.
The body is a sacred garment: it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honour, and with joy and with fear as well. But always, though, with blessing.
Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery what it all means
I think the reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.