Based on the case-study of the dance-group kaikkottukali, this article examines the different types of knowledges that are made manifest in a performance, for instance collective coordination or dissociation between what is expressed in singing or music and what is shown through dancing. It also focuses on the new media, such as books and video-recordings (VCD) that help make this particular dance better known among the private caste-organisations networks and art-schools festivals supported by the regional State of Kerala. Even if this dance has managed to reach a larger audience today, locally it bears statutory stakes that need constant redefinition. The analysis of the types of knowledges is viewed alongside that of forms of ascendancy (and of local personalities) that hold authority on aesthetic codes used by performers. And it shows a process of crystallisation between the conflicting values of a caste-based society that organises musical knowledge on hierarchical terms and the cultural policy of a Communist government which aims at diffusing egalitarian values to which the different groups of performers try to adjust or to resist.