Based on an anthropological study of Cuban archives related to popular dances, from danzón to salsa via Afro-Cuban dances, the chapter questions the issues raised by the political and ideological use of the dancing body as a vehicle for cultural memory in Cuba. Different types of archives regarding Cuban dances are examined: the “classical” archives preserved in the Havanese libraries and documentation centres produced under Fidel Castro’s government; the “post-archives” (Franco, Dance Research Journal, 47, 3–22, 2015) of the audiovisual recordings made by the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional created in 1962; the body of the dancer as site of recollection and potential archive in the making. The chapter then investigates the temporalities of the archive of the body and the body as archive as well as the political dimensions of such processes in the particular context of Fidel Castro’s socialist regime.