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The body says what words cannot.
Martha Graham
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The physical expression of the body can communicate emotions and truths that words often fail to capture.

Martha Graham's quote emphasizes the power of body language and physical movement as forms of expression that transcend verbal communication. It suggests that the body can convey deep emotions and sentiments that are sometimes difficult to articulate with words alone, illustrating the importance of physicality in art and human connection.

Themes

BodyExpressionCommunicationArtDance

In practice

Example use cases

In a dance performance, to express the emotions of love and loss.

More from Martha Graham

Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
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Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.
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What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
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No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
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The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
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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 GrahamRead

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