The Breath of Balboa: How Lester Young Taught Me to Dance

The chipped Formica of the diner booth felt cool under my elbows, a familiar comfort against the humid August night. Rain lashed against the window, mirroring the restless energy thrumming inside me. I wasn’t thinking about the lukewarm coffee, or the chipped nail polish on my thumb. I was thinking about Lester Young. And, strangely, about my Balboa.

See, I’d been stuck. Not bad Balboa, mind you. Technically proficient. The basic step was there, the connection solid enough. But it felt…flat. Like a photograph of a memory, lacking the scent of the room, the heat of the bodies, the feeling of the music actually moving through you. I’d been chasing that elusive quality for months, attending workshops, social dances, dissecting videos until my eyes ached. Everyone told me to “listen to the music,” but it felt like I was listening at the music, trying to find the beat, instead of letting it find me.

Then, a friend – a trumpet player with a soul steeped in the blues – handed me a recording. Not a flashy, virtuosic showcase. Just Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Quartet, live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1965. “Listen to his breath,” he said, a cryptic instruction that initially felt…silly.

Breath? I was a dancer, not a pulmonologist.

But I listened. And I listened again. And again.

It wasn’t just the notes Young played, though those were, of course, exquisite. It was the space between them. The way he’d inhale, a long, slow draw that seemed to pull the melody along with it. The way he’d exhale, a gentle release that allowed the sound to bloom, to linger, to breathe on its own. It wasn’t about hitting every beat, it was about inhabiting the time around the beat. It was about phrasing, about telling a story not just with what was played, but with what wasn’t.

Young’s sound, often described as “cool,” wasn’t about emotional detachment. It was about a profound, internalised feeling, expressed with a restraint that made the moments of release all the more powerful. He wasn’t shouting; he was confiding. He wasn’t demanding attention; he was offering an intimacy.

And that, I realised, was what my Balboa was missing.

Balboa, born in the crowded ballrooms of 1920s and 30s California, is a dance of subtle conversation. It’s a close embrace, a constant negotiation of weight and momentum. It’s a dance that demands responsiveness, a willingness to yield and to lead, to anticipate and to react. But I’d been approaching it like a puzzle to be solved, a series of steps to be executed. I was focused on the doing of the dance, not the being within it.

I started listening to Young differently. Not as background music for my commute, but as a lesson in phrasing. I noticed how his solos weren’t linear progressions, but rather a series of interwoven ideas, each one breathing into the next. He’d introduce a motif, let it hang in the air, then revisit it later, transformed by the context. He’d play with tempo, stretching and compressing the time, creating a sense of ebb and flow.

I began to apply this to my dancing. Instead of rigidly adhering to the eight-count phrase, I started to listen for the smaller units of musical thought. The little pauses, the subtle shifts in dynamics, the way the bass line seemed to breathe beneath the melody. I started to allow myself to be led not just by the beat, but by the feeling of the music.

It meant letting go of control. It meant trusting my partner, and trusting my own instincts. It meant embracing the imperfections, the moments of hesitation, the little stumbles that inevitably happen when you’re truly listening.

The next time I stepped onto the dance floor, something shifted. It wasn’t a dramatic transformation, no sudden burst of virtuosity. It was more subtle, a loosening of the shoulders, a softening of the gaze, a willingness to simply be present in the moment.

I stopped trying to anticipate my partner’s moves and started to respond to them. I stopped focusing on the steps and started to feel the music moving through my body. I started to breathe with the music, inhaling the energy of the band, exhaling the joy of the dance.

And suddenly, the Balboa felt…alive.

It wasn’t about hitting every beat perfectly. It was about finding the spaces between the beats, the moments of quiet intimacy, the subtle nuances that made the dance unique. It was about telling a story, not with my feet, but with my entire body.

The rain outside the diner had slowed to a drizzle. The chipped Formica still felt cool under my elbows. But the chill had lifted. I understood now what my friend meant about Lester Young’s breath. It wasn’t just about the music; it was about the life force that animated it. And it was about finding that same life force within myself, and within the dance.

It’s a lesson I carry with me still. Because jazz, like life, isn’t about perfection. It’s about embracing the imperfections, the vulnerabilities, the moments of quiet beauty that emerge when you allow yourself to truly listen, to truly feel, to truly breathe. And sometimes, all it takes is the ghost of a saxophone player to remind you of that.