"When do you breathe?" Steve asked me in practice yesterday.

"I inhale when we rise, and exhale when we fall" I replied after a moment, as generally, I don't spend much time consciously thinking about when I do and don't breathe when I'm dancing -- but in an effort to keep myself tall and vertical, I have been making an effort to do inhale every time we turn to promenade, at least.

"Ah. I've realized that the reason I keep dying by the end of rounds is that I don't breathe much during the earlier dances."

I wasn't sure what to say.

I discussed this, later, at dinner with my brother, who pronounced Steve "one of the worst breathers [he's] ever seen." Again, I was dumbstruck, as the concept of being a "good breather" or a "bad breather" is not really something I spend much time contemplating. I just do.

I suppose that I have had my times when I haven't been such a good breather, for lack of a better term, either... the first time it even crossed my sphere of influence that breathing might matter when dancing was when someone asked Charlotte Jorgenson about it in a workshop she gave a few years ago in New York. She responded that yes, she does control her breathing, and carefully, when she dances, to help her get better movement and stretch and shape. I ignored this, largely, at the time, due to lack of elaboration and no way to apply it, but her words came drifting back some time later in the midst of a viennese where I found myself in the unhappy circumstance of muscles in my upper back and neck deciding that the middle of the Viennese Waltz would be a lovely time to seize. Which meant that to just keep going, All I thought about in that moment was breathing deeply and getting oxygen into the very muscles that were unhappy.

It worked, then, and I suppose from that point forward I've been becoming progressively more aware of my breathing.

Though I must confess, I often think about other aspects of technique, while dancing, and occasionally aspects of performance much more than something as "simple and natural" as breathing.

Interesting, though, that my technique has come to a point where when and how I choose to breathe matters. I really am bringing dance down to a science for myself.