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Martha Graham citations
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Martha Graham, née le 11 mai 1894 dans le comté d'Allegheny et morte le 1er avril 1991 , est une danseuse et chorégraphe américaine. Elle est considérée comme l'une des plus grandes innovatrices de la danse moderne et par conséquent l'une des fondatrices de la danse contemporaine.



Martha Graham commence à s'intéresser à la danse très jeune, après avoir vu danser Ruth Saint Denis dans les années 1910. Ce n'est qu'à l'âge de 22 ans, en 1916, qu'elle envisage une carrière professionnelle en entrant à la Denishawn School. En 1925, elle commence à enseigner la danse à la Eastman School of Music à Rochester, avant de fonder sa propre école. En 1926, elle fonde sa propre compagnie, The Martha Graham Dance Company, à laquelle participèrent un certain nombre de danseuses , dont Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow, Jean Erdman et Jane Dudley , qui toutes quatre rejoignirent ensuite le New Dance Group, plus ou moins impliqué dans le mouvement des droits civiques.

Son style unique de danse moderne est le reflet de l'art moderne de son époque. Ses créations la rendent très vite célèbre pour les innovations qu'elle apporte à la danse moderne. Figure importante de la danse moderne, on lui doit une technique fondée sur la respiration, la contraction et la détente du corps, ainsi que de nombreuses œuvres comme Lamentation , Cave of the Heart et The Rite of Spring . Elle mesurait 1 mètre 60 mais paraissait souvent plus grande sur scène grâce à des costumes qu'elle avait le goût de choisir.

En 1981, elle reçoit le tout premier American Dance Festival Award pour l'ensemble de sa carrière. En 1998, le magazine américain Time a désigné Martha Graham comme la « danseuse du siècle » et l'une des personnalités les plus importantes du XXe siècle.

Jusqu'à un âge très avancé, Martha Graham a accompagné les membres de sa troupe dans leurs tournées à travers les États-Unis et le reste du monde, pour superviser leur travail. On l'a ainsi vue, en juillet 1987, apparaître en fin de représentation, pour une ovation debout, sur la scène dressée dans la Cour d'honneur du palais des Papes, lors d'une série de représentations données dans le cadre du Festival d'Avignon.

✵ 11. mai 1894 – 1. avril 1991   •   Autres noms Marta Graham
Martha Graham photo
Martha Graham: 48   citations 0   J'aime

Martha Graham: Citations en anglais

“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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Martha Graham

I Am A Dancer (1952)
Contexte: 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.

“You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being.”

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Martha Graham

Source: Blood Memory

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

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Martha Graham

“The most brilliant scientific discoveries will in time change and perhaps grow obsolete as new scientific manifestations emerge. But art is eternal, for it reveals the inner landscape, which is the soul of man.”

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Martha Graham

I Am A Dancer (1952)

“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.”

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Martha Graham

I Am A Dancer (1952)

“When you start with an idea, or something hits you, then you have to follow that through to the end, and it's the following through to the end that makes the pattern. That, for me, is choreography.”

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Martha Graham

New York Times interview (1985)

“Many times I hear the phrase "the dance of life". It is an expression that touches me deeply, for the instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived — the human body.”

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Martha Graham

I Am A Dancer (1952)

“The main thing, of course, always, is the fact that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost. Ambition is not enough; necessity is everything.”

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Martha Graham

I Am A Dancer (1952)

“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.”

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Martha Graham

New York Times interview (1985)

“The erotic element is life, but doesn't have to absorb you, it doesn't have to be a naughty word. It's the love of life in many ways.”

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Martha Graham

New York Times interview (1985)

“The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.”

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Martha Graham

I Am A Dancer (1952)
Variante: Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.

“I love words very much. I've always loved to talk, and I've always love words — the words that rest in your mouth, what words mean and how you taste them and so on. And for me the spoken word can be used almost as a gesture.”

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Martha Graham

New York Times interview (1985)

“Some of you are doomed to be artists.”

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Martha Graham

Though often used by Graham, she credited this to Robert Edmond Jones. Agnes de Mille states in "The Life and Work of Martha Graham" (2010), p. 215: It was Jones who used to say to his classes, "Some of you are doomed to be artists." Martha picked up this phrase and used it many times thereafter.
Misattributed

“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.”

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Martha Graham

I Am A Dancer (1952)

“I've always regarded eroticism as a beautiful word. I'm not ashamed to be linked to it. I would be ashamed to be linked to flamboyant sexuality; that's a part of life, but it isn't all of it.”

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Martha Graham

New York Times interview (1985)

“I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.”

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Martha Graham

As quoted in "About Martha Graham" at the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance http://marthagraham.org/resources/aboutgraham.

“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.”

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Martha Graham

I Am A Dancer (1952)

“Movement never lies.”

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Martha Graham

A phrase she often used, which she credited to her father.
Misattributed

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