The Breath of Balboa: Finding Soul in the Steps

The chipped Formica of the diner booth felt cool under my forearm, a small comfort against the Louisiana humidity clinging to me like a regret. Rain lashed against the window, mirroring the tempest brewing inside. I wasn’t hungover, not exactly. More… dislocated. I’d just spent three days at a Balboa intensive, a weekend of furious footwork, elegant leans, and the constant, desperate search for that elusive connection with a lead. And I felt…flat. Like a dropped soufflé.

Everyone else seemed to get it. They were swirling, dipping, radiating a joy that felt utterly foreign. I could hit the steps, sure. The basic, the advanced, the variations that looked impossibly fluid on YouTube. But it wasn’t dancing. It was…problem-solving. A frantic calculation of weight shifts and momentum. Where was the soul? Where was the breath?

Old Man Tiber, the diner’s proprietor, a man who’d seen more heartbreak than a blues singer, slid a chipped mug of coffee across the counter. “Trouble, son?”

I mumbled something about Balboa, about feeling like a mechanical doll. He just grunted, then, without prompting, flipped on the ancient radio perched above the grill.

And then it happened.

A saxophone, liquid and languid, poured out of the speaker. Not the bombastic, showy stuff. This was…different. It wasn’t about hitting the high notes, it was about the spaces between them. It was Lester Young. “Lady Be Good,” from the 1936 recording with the Count Basie Orchestra.

Now, I’d heard Lester Young before, of course. Who hasn’t? But this time, it wasn’t background music. It was a revelation. It wasn’t the notes themselves, but the way he played them. The way he bent them, stretched them, almost…whispered them. The sheer, audacious space he allowed to exist within the melody.

It was his breath.

That’s what struck me. Not the technical brilliance, though that was undeniable. It was the feeling that every note was born from a deep, considered inhale, and released with a sigh. A sigh that carried the weight of the world, and yet, somehow, remained buoyant.

Suddenly, I understood.

Balboa, at its heart, isn’t about steps. It’s about conversation. A dialogue between two bodies, responding to each other, anticipating each other, breathing together. And I’d been so focused on the mechanics, on getting the footwork right, that I’d forgotten to listen. I’d forgotten to breathe.

Lester Young wasn’t just playing a song; he was creating a space for connection. He wasn’t forcing the music, he was yielding to it. He was letting the melody flow through him, shaping it with his breath, his phrasing, his sheer, unadulterated feeling.

And that’s what Balboa demands. You can’t lead if you’re not listening. You can’t follow if you’re not yielding. You can’t connect if you’re not breathing together.

I spent the rest of the day listening to Lester Young. Not just “Lady Be Good,” but everything I could find. “Shoe Shine Boy,” “Afternoon of a Redhead,” “Tickle Toe.” Each recording was a masterclass in phrasing, in space, in the art of letting the music breathe.

I started to analyze how he did it. The subtle delays, the almost imperceptible pauses, the way he’d hang back on a beat, creating a delicious tension before resolving it. It wasn’t about being behind the beat, it was about playing with time. It was about creating a sense of anticipation, of playful uncertainty.

And then I started to apply it to my dancing.

The next time I stepped onto the floor, I didn’t think about the steps. I thought about Lester Young’s breath. I focused on creating space, on yielding to my partner’s lead, on listening not just with my ears, but with my entire body.

I slowed down. I breathed deeper. I stopped trying to make things happen and started allowing them to unfold.

And something shifted.

The frantic calculation disappeared. The mechanical movements softened. The connection deepened. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. But it was…alive. It was a conversation. It was a dance.

I realized that Lester Young wasn’t just a saxophone player. He was a choreographer of feeling. He was a master of space and time. He was a teacher, even across the decades, whispering secrets to anyone willing to listen.

The ghost of Lester Young, his breath woven into the fabric of the music, had finally found its way into my Balboa. And in that moment, in the swirling chaos of the dance floor, I understood that jazz isn’t just something you listen to. It’s something you become. It’s a way of being in the world, a way of connecting with others, a way of breathing life into the spaces between the notes.

And sometimes, all it takes is a chipped mug of coffee, a rainy afternoon, and the hauntingly beautiful sound of a saxophone to remind you of that.