Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
Martha GrahamRead
The body says what words cannot.
Interpretation
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.
In practice
In a dance performance, to express the emotions of love and loss.
Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
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.
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
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.
When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.
Hard to believe lightning can strike twice, but it surely did. The moment Caitriona Balfe came on screen, I sat up straight and said, βThere she is!β She and Sam Heughan absolutely lit up the screen with fireworks.
I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
One does not photograph something simply for 'what it is', but 'for what else it is.
Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form.
I don't go to shows because I just want to listen to the music performed live. I want to get to know the person who's performing it. Or I want to, like, take away a sense that I had an experience that nobody else is going to have again, or a unique experience for that moment.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.