“People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose: I was chosen to be a dancer, and, with that, you live all your life.”

— Martha Graham

I Am A Dancer (1952)
Source: Blood Memory

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update March 11, 2022. History

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Martha Graham 48

American dancer and choreographer 1894–1991

Sheldon Kopp (1929–1999) American psychotherapist

Source: Even a stone can be a teacher (1985), p. 11

“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

A New Earth (2005)
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“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.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

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

“I really don't know why I clicked. I didn't want to be a dancer, I just did it to work my way through college. But I was always an athlete and gymnast, so it came naturally.”

Gene Kelly (1912–1996) American dancer, actor, singer, director, producer and choreographer

Quoted in "Gene Kelly's Musical Memories" by Rex Reed, in The Chicago Tribune (November 29, 1970)

“I noticed that my problems occur when I try to dominate the text, when I try to ask it to be something, or to ask it to fit into some sort of structure, or when I ask it to compliment my ego, or all of these things. That's really where all my problems start from. Where it's going very well, is where I have sort of surrendered to it, you know, where I am behind the text, and I am watching, like a dancer who's following another dancer, and just watching where it might go next. All I want to be is, I want to be as ready and as available as possible for it. That seems to me all I really need to do.”

Hisham Matar (1970) American writer

at 42:00.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)

“He's a genius…a classical dancer like I never saw in my life.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Mikhail Baryshnikov in "Interview with Mike Wallace", 60 Minutes, CBS Television. February 18, 1979. (M).

“I didn't choose the thug life, the thug life chose me.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

“I was your luxury. For nineteen years I have been put in your man’s world and was forbidden to touch anything and you made me think that all was going very well and that I did not have to worry about anything but putting flowers in vases. Why did you lie to me? Why did you keep me ignorant, if it was to admit to me one day that this world is cracking and that you are all powerless and to make me choose between a suicide and a murder?”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Jessica to Hugo, Act 5, sc. 2
Dirty Hands (1948)

“If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It’s better to live somehow than not at all.”

Anton Chekhov book The Bet

The Bet (1889)

“I've grown up disciplined all my life as a dancer, so I know how to eat and work out. Do I do it? No!”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to E! News http://www.eonline.com/news/924125/erika-jayne-s-diet-and-fitness-secrets-may-surprise-you (2018)

“People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose: I was chosen to be a dancer, and, with that, you live all your life.”

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