On April 18, the Martha Graham Dance Company will stage a six-and-a-half hour reading of Graham’s 1991 Autobiography, Blood Memory. The event will take place at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, at Lincoln Center, starting at 11 a.m.
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.
I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man–the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.
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.
The body never lies.
At the time I started in ballet they were dancing ‘The Spirit of Champagne’ on pointe, in Paris. I thought, ‘I don’t want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!
Illustration by Mattia Massolini.
(via)
]]>