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- 15 page PDF booklet.
Reviews
"I've been thrilled for many years to teach with Geoffrey making music for my classes, and his recordings capture the creativity, variety and beauty of those alive and vivid times. Geoffrey's latest CD, Stretch and Breathe 2/Berlin Dance Works is as provocative as always and gives us space for thought and movement. The instrumentation creates wonderful voices and moods, and the variety of rhythms is terrific. The work he's done with Helen Hansen with dance in mind, provides a broad palette for formal class teaching and for individual experimentation."
-- Christine Dakin, former principal dancer and Artistic Director Laureate, Martha Graham Dance Company Visiting Lecturer Harvard University teacher, Neighborhood Playhouse, NY; Universidad de Colima and Centro Nacional de Danza Contemporanea, Mexico; DanzFest, Italy
"'Spirit Dwelling' and 'Stretch and Breathe 2/Berlin Dance' Works Geoffrey's music becomes a collaborative partner to you. With his deep understanding of the dance movement, its dynamics, complex rhythms and relationship with breath, he will take you somewhere not just a dance studio."
-- MIKI ORIHARA, Martha Graham Dance Company, New York, NY





Composed and played by Geoffrey Armes. Dance Guidance by Helen Hansen.
Geoffrey: “Dance training usually involves long hours of repetitive and arduous physical labour. One intention of this music is to create a sound simple enough to be easily followed, yet complex and subtle enough to sustain repeated listening. An aural garden to wander around in, each time discovering ‘new’ growth, that really was always there, unnoticed before.”
Helen: “The collaboration between dancer and musician, movement and music, is an ongoing dialogue. A conversation, if you will, between artists who have the potential to create and communicate an idea or mood, to cultivate something new each moment. When Geoffrey asked me to provide dance guidance for this CD I found myself drawn to the question of how to shape dance combinations to allow there to be growth from elementary movement to more complex ideas of playing with dynamics and tempo, while at the same time not dictating to Geoffrey how each phrase should be written or played. We both felt that this collection of music should be able to stand on its own and not require dance movement to explain its existence. With that said I have offered suggestions of classroom combinations that inspire me. Whether it be a warm up series of seated bounces or traveling small jumps, they all have a structure that can be modified to fit the varied ranges of dancers that exist.”