Music and dance do not circulate in time and space in the same ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Benin on the genre of salsa, this article investigates the appropriation over several decades of salsa music on the one hand, and of salsa dance on the other. Using a choreomusical approach, I interrogate the ways both components were transformed in the process, whether separately or in connection to each other. I therefore analyse two quite independent processes, even if they follow similar patterns, of music and dance beninisation within different contexts and timeframes that today interestingly overlap on the dance floor and in music videos. This article highlights not only the layered temporalities of music and dance appropriations but also their actual implications vis-à-vis a broader Beninese musical and kinetic landscape.