dance: becoming an athlete of God

Spiritual resource to share: rhythm of head and heart

A friend once asked for a more tangible definition of Soul.  I could think of no better explanation that to see Soul as expressed through dance.  I was a student of dance for about ten years and loved Martha Graham's deep and organic structure of movement.  As Martha Graham was a pioneer in dance, I included some of her ideas about dance.  See for yourself how much of dance defines the rhythm and beauty of life all around us and enjoy this dance class as if it were your own!

Selected Martha Graham Quotations

• There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. We are, all of us, unique, each a unique pattern of creativity, and if it is not fulfilled it is lost for all ...

• The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.

• No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that the others are behind the time.


• Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.


• Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.


• In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.


• 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. There is a great deal of outer space, distant from our daily lives, where I feel our imagination wanders sometimes. It will find a planet or it will not find a planet, and that is what a dancer does.


• We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.

• We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.


• It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.


• I'm asked so often at ninety-six whether I believe in life after death. I do believe in the sanctity of life, the continuity of life and of energy.