The body says what words cannot.
Martha GrahamRead
Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the sanctity and significance of a dancer's presence and expression in any space.
Martha Graham's quote reflects the idea that a dancer brings beauty, spirituality, and intentionality to their environment. When a dancer performs, the space transforms into a sacred place, filled with artistry and emotion, underscoring the profound impact of dance on both the performer and the audience.
In practice
In a discussion about the influence of art, one could reference this quote to highlight the emotional power of performance.
The body says what words cannot.
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.
This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.
Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
I wish you could see the two cats drowsing side by side in a Victorian nursing chair, their paws, their ears, their tails complementarily adjusted, their blue eyes blinking open on a single thought of when I shall remember it's their supper time. They might have been composed by Bach for two flutes.
The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture βThis is a pipeβ, I'd have been lying!
When you work on something that combines both the spectacular and the relatable, the hyperreal and the real, it suddenly can become supernatural. The hypothetical and the theoretical can become literal.
Poetry allies itself with beauty - a supreme union - but never uses it as its ultimate goal or sole nourishment.
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