”Dance has nothing to do with what you can tell in words. It has to do with actions, colored by deep inarticulate feelings that can only be expressed in movement.”

“I think the reason dance has held such ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living. Many times I hear the phrase..the dance of life. It is close to me for a very simple and understandable reason. The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived...the human body. It is the instrument by which all the primaries of experience are made manifest. It holds in its memory all matters of life and death and love.”

“Dance is another way of putting things. It isn’t a literal or literary thing, but everything that a dancer does, even in the most lyrical thing, has a very different and prescribed meaning. If it could be said in words, it would be: but outside of words, outside of painting, outside of sculpture, inside the body is an interior landscape which is revealed in movement. Each person reads into it what he brings to it.

“Wherever a dancer stands ready, that spot is holy ground.”

My technique is based on breathing. I have based everything that I have done on the pulsation of life, which is, to me, the pulsation of breath. Every time you breathe life in or expel it, it is a release or a contraction. It is that basic to the body. You are born with these two movements and you keep both until you die. But you begin to use them consciously so that they are beneficial to the dance dramatically. You must animate that energy within yourself. Energy is the thing that sustains the world and the universe. It animates the world and everything in it. I recognized early in my life that there was this kind of energy, some animating spark, or whatever you choose to call it. It can be Buddha, it can be anything, it can be everything. It begins with breath...”


“There is a necessity for movement when words are not adequate. The basis of all dancing is something deep within you.”


“In this properly balanced position, your body will not become tired: The stance is maintained in perpendicular lines. Seen from the side, the ankle bone must be perpendicular to the floor (not with a pronated arch but held straight up); the hip bone must be in a straight line at the natural bend or crease created at the top of the leg when the leg is raises and the torso kept erect (the pelvis must not be tipped forward or backward); the shoulder at the hollow in front and below the clavicle bone should remain upright (should not drop forward or be held unnaturally back); the base of the neck should be held in a perpendicular line to the lobe of the ear; and the forehead between the eyebrows and the hairline should make a straight line.”

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and 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. 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. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”


“ We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.”


“Then there is this cultivation of the being. It is through this and and the legends of the soul’s journey are re-told, with all their gaiety and all their tragedy, the bitterness and sweetness of living. It is at this point that the sweep of life catches up the mere personality of the performer and while the individual (the undivided one), becomes greater, the personal becomes less personal.

And there is grace. I mean the grace resulting form faith...faith in life, in love, in people, in the act of dancing. All this is necessary to any performance in life which is magnetic, powerful, rich in meaning.”

and fromThe Notebooks of Martha Graham:

“My Love is life-
with it’s loves
fears
hates
deaths
resurrections
battles
acts of peace
celebrations-
All these are the Images we contemplate....

To love is to contemplate the images-
‘The Great images by which people live are this kind: God, love, the soul, space, time, the sense of death, the awareness of life. They do not grow as plants grow. Every man’s thought subtly changes them & all experience & every voyage made by every man & every shock of grief or love makes its minute accretion to the theme....
These are the dangerous images by which we live and all the history we can ever know is the history of these images...these images are constantly changing..possess a kind of magical instinct for change.”