I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover – the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.
The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual – as we think so will we act.
I believe that we learn by practice.
We are all of us, unique – each a unique pattern of creativity and if we do not fulfill it, it is lost for all time.
Theater used to be a verb; it used to be an act. But nowadays it is just a noun. It is a place.
I never thought of myself as being a genius. I don’t know what genius is. I think a far better expression is a retriever, a lovely strong golden retriever that brings things back from the past, or retrieves things from our common blood memory.
One can always lament, you know – but to laugh in the face of life, that’s very hard. And for me the great tragedian should also be a great comedian.
You don’t pick dance. Dance picks you.
My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
You give all your life to doing this one thing. It sounds grim, it sounds frightening – it isn’t – it has a great gaiety at times and a great wonder.
The body is a sacred garment.
To me, a building – if it’s beautiful – is the love of one man, he’s made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.
I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do.
I don’t try to tell the dancers exactly what a dance means before they do it.
Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.
I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
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.
Discipline is liberation.
What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
In 1980, a well-meaning fundraiser came to see me and said, “Miss Graham, the most powerful thing you have going for you to raise money is your respectability.” I wanted to spit. Respectable! Show me any artist who wants to be respectable.