The Silence Between the Steps: Finding Soul in Balboa

The chipped Formica of the diner booth felt cool under my elbows. Rain lashed against the window, blurring the neon glow of the all-night laundry across the street. Coffee, black and bitter, tasted like regret and possibility, a familiar combination. I wasn’t thinking about Balboa, not directly. I was listening.

Lester Young. Specifically, the 1939 recording of “Lady Be Good” with the Count Basie Orchestra. Not the whole thing, not at first. Just… the spaces. The air around the notes.

See, I’d hit a wall with my Balboa. Not a technical wall, exactly. I could hit the basics, the rock steps, the whips, the throws. I could even fake a little fancy footwork. But it felt… hollow. Like a beautifully constructed machine lacking a soul. I was doing Balboa, but I wasn’t feeling it. It was precise, but devoid of that delicious, reckless abandon that makes the dance sing.

I’d been obsessing over technique, over leading and following, over the geometry of the floor. I’d watched countless videos, dissected every movement, and driven my poor practice partner, Clara, half-mad with requests for “just one more time, and really feel the weight change.” It was exhausting. And it wasn’t working.

Then, a friend – a trumpet player named Miles who smells perpetually of old brass and clove cigarettes – handed me a stack of Basie records. “Listen,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Don’t analyze. Just… listen. Let it seep in.”

And I did. And at first, it was just music. Glorious, swinging music. But then, I started to notice Young.

He wasn’t the loudest voice in the orchestra. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t try to dominate. But his tenor saxophone… it breathed. It wasn’t just about the notes he played, it was about the air he left between them. The way he’d phrase a melody, drawing it out, then letting it hang, suspended in the silence. The subtle vibrato, a tremor of emotion.

It was the negative space that got me. The pauses. The rests. The implication of what could be played, rather than the insistence on what was.

I kept returning to “Lady Be Good.” And slowly, something shifted. I started to hear the conversation happening within the music. Basie’s piano laying down the foundation, the rhythm section pulsing like a heartbeat, and Young responding, not with a direct answer, but with a thoughtful, nuanced echo. It wasn’t a call and response, it was a… a shared contemplation.

And then it hit me. Balboa, at its core, is a conversation. A dialogue between two bodies, responding to each other, anticipating each other, creating something new in the moment. But I’d been treating it like a script, trying to follow a predetermined sequence of steps. I’d forgotten about the spaces, the pauses, the unspoken communication.

I went back to the studio with Clara. We put on “Lady Be Good.” And this time, I didn’t think about the steps. I didn’t think about leading or following. I just listened. I tried to feel the breath in the music, the way Young used silence to create tension and release.

And I started to respond. Not with a pre-planned move, but with an impulse, a feeling. I let my body react to the music, to Clara’s movement, to the spaces between the notes. I stopped trying to control the dance and started to surrender to it.

It wasn’t perfect. There were stumbles, missteps, moments of awkwardness. But it felt… different. It felt alive. It felt like we were actually talking to each other, not just executing a routine.

The key, I realized, wasn’t about mastering the technique, it was about mastering the listening. About being present in the moment, about allowing the music to guide you, about trusting your instincts. About understanding that the silence is just as important as the sound.

Young’s playing taught me that. He showed me that the most powerful moments aren’t always the loudest or the most complex. Sometimes, it’s the quietest moments, the spaces between the notes, that hold the most meaning.

It’s like Murakami writes about jazz – it’s not just about the notes, it’s about the loneliness that surrounds them. That loneliness, that space, is where the magic happens. It’s where the connection is forged.

Now, when I dance Balboa, I try to channel that spirit. I try to breathe with the music, to listen not just with my ears, but with my entire body. I try to create those spaces, those moments of anticipation, those subtle shifts in weight that invite a response.

It’s still a work in progress. I still stumble, I still make mistakes. But now, when I dance, I feel like I’m not just moving my feet, I’m telling a story. A story that’s written in the spaces between the notes, in the breath of the saxophone, in the shared silence of two bodies moving as one.

And sometimes, if I close my eyes, I can almost hear Lester Young whispering in my ear, reminding me to just… listen. To let the ghost in the groove take over.