Martha Graham Quotes

My overall opinion about this quote is determined on how I feel I’m connected with Martha Graham, because she was the one who conveyed feeling and thought into this quote. Martha Graham was a remarkable woman of her age who wanted to dance her heart out about the hardships that influenced life for everyone including herself. Her goal as a dance choreographer was to teach audiences a moral lesson about the influences of life in the most passionate way for them to understand a message and keep it in their minds forever. She always knew that preforming a message with dance would be more effective than explaining it with words because, “the essence of dance is the expression of man.” Revealing an expression through dance is no different then saying

it with words because either way it is a single look a person has, however when dancing you convey your expression with greater influence, power, and exaggeration. I think that every person is limited with their words but not with their movement, that is why the essence of dance is the expression of man because that is the most sufficient way of showing someone how strongly you feel about something or wanting to teach someone else about something.

During the Martha Graham unit, we got to choose which social issue we wanted to create a dance out of based on Martha Graham’s technique. My group chose bullying as our social issue and our dance went flawless, people in my group included Julia. C, Sophia, and Siham, in our dance we had represented bullying in 4 different stories. I personally think that was an amazing idea because, in the world there are not specific races or ages or colours or genders that determines if you are going to get bullied or not, and the fact is if Martha Graham saw our dance she would know that our dance was representing “the expression of man” in all over the world. I’m connected to Martha because I too express my feelings in the best way through dance to convey a

message.
“The landscape of his soul,” these are meaningful words that are so hard to define because many people might think differently on how to define them.

These words to me only remind me of one thing, people on the outside and their soul on the inside. People in the world have a two sides to them, when you look at a person you judge them instantly on what they look like in front of you which is the outside of them. You would think that you know everything about that person. But you are wrong; when Martha says, “the essence of dance is the expression of man --- the landscape of his soul” she is talking about who a person is on the inside on how they express themselves on the outside with the expression of dance or emotions. The expression that you use in front of people is not as revealing as in front of an audience on a stage, because when you dance your emotions are lead out to the sky, you can’t control them, you can’t hold a grip on them, you pretty much lose them to anybody there. That is what Martha is talking about; she is saying that on a stage when you preform your emotions is lead out without you even trying, which shows your true self fully. When you talk to someone and are not as nervous or excited you have a choice on what to do with your emotions, which confuses other people on how to describe you later on. That is why when you dance it is expressing your emotions uncontrollably, which is expressing your true self, which can be considered as the landscape of your

soul. The term bullying reminded me from when I was in elementary school and I had been bullied in the grades 6-8, ever since I’ve remembered the hardships I had and realized that I needed to be stronger like I am today, before I was very naïve and listened to everyone else before myself. The reason I’m connected to this quote is because I’m like Martha Graham and the reason I’m like her is because I taught myself a moral lesson as if she would teach other people. The moral lesson I had learned was that you need to believe in yourself before people can believe in you and/or if you can believe in them. Now “the landscape of my soul” is expressed in a different way, as I said before I was very naïve and didn’t listen to myself, many years later I have changed, that is why I’m not naïve anymore, because I changed the outside of myself to make my life less frustrating and look different in front of people. When people look at me now they think that I could be a mean person but the truth is I am still naïve and will always remain this way because you can’t change someone’s landscape of their soul.
I’m a strong women leader like Martha; Martha Graham was and still is a history maker, a peacekeeper and an influence creator. Her character includes all of these things because she had been “the mother of dance” who influenced people to change the world for the good. She expressed her thoughts and feelings on social issues of the world with her dance, which made her mark in history extraordinary and a representative for a strong woman leader. She always believed that nothing was more revealing to her than movement, because it would show people’s true emotions strongly. I think of my self as someone like her because she is an amazing hero to the world just like I’m an amazing hero to myself. “I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.” I represent a powerful, meaningful statement like that because with my hard work and effort I put into my dance it helps other people live as well. During the warm up unit, I had to work individually on the dance because my partner had been absent for many days and that frustrated me a lot. The last part of the quote reminds me of how I finished the dance by myself without the other person’s help because “I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself.” And the fact is, I finished the dance and showed people who thought I was not going to finish the dance by myself, that I did finish and succeeded. So by using the dance, I did revealed something about myself, that I have determination, which shows how strong a human can be, because if I was able to do the dance by my self and other people couldn’t, that would show them that I have a better influence at finishing my jobs on time even when I’m alone. This is another way I’m connected with Martha because she had always been very determined to show and prove to people who she was and not what people think of her or what she could do or couldn’t do. What ever I do for the world from now on, I hope that it will show something good about me and change others to make them as a good as they can be. No one in the world has more power or a better influence at changing your or other people’s life then you.