In recent years, metropolitan India is witnessing an increasing popularity of salsa and other social dance forms from the Caribbean (bachata, merengue, different forms of zouk). This paper examines the development of this new form of urban leisure in India, where popular culture is already saturated with several indigenous dance forms (pre-eminently, those derived from Bollywood), as well as with less codified movements associated with Anglo-American rock and pop. I ask: what is the significance of a Caribbean-Latin dance culture, with its specific rhythmic and choreographic demands, permeating this established fabric of social leisure? What are the routes through which these forms are entering Indian public culture, what spaces are nourishing it, and what new forms of social interaction are being created by it?

The talk will draw on: my experience of dancing salsa in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, on Bollywood's burgeoning interest in salsa, on Indian salseros at Salsa congresses and festivals abroad, and also on the promotion of salsa by Latin American consulates in India. I will argue that salsa’s rise in India points to new, unexpected modes of transnational as well as inter-class interactions that, together, signal new Indian cosmopolitanisms in formation. Throughout, I will pay attention to the body as a layered site of inherited and appropriated dance movements, while insisting on the necessity of incorporating pleasure into theories of cosmopolitanism and transnationalism (hence the significance of my title, a quote from Colombian musician Shakira).

This research-in-progress is part of a larger project in evolution on transoceanic and transnational rhythm cultures.