Long neglected in the social sciences, dance offers a privileged space for research on the subject of the transformation of the society. By approaching the aesthetics and politics involved in the work of Taoufiq Izeddiou I propose to focus on the relationships made and unmade by one who considers himself as a pioneer. Since 2001, Taoufiq Izeddiou has engaged in a choreographic project that popularized the practice of a so called contemporary dance in the city of Marrakech. His approach invests practices of creation, transmission and festival that contributes to establish the city as a prominent space for the existence of dance in Morocco. Taking part of a globalised art-practice this artist I discuss the work is entangled in various situated temporal, geographic, and sociocultural contexts. My contribution focuses on the study of the memorial dimensions and the selective reconstructions of the "popular heritage" in  the heart of Taoufiq Izeddiou’s work and practices. Analyzing his ways to rely on traditions and his attempt to overpass the binary rupture between modernity and the past, I contextualize the logics and values of the recompositions he is building out. The contribution aims at going beyond a posture that analyzes contemporary dance in terms of global-product, interests or strategies that reductively see them as offshoots of European styles. As rooted in a long term ethnography research (2019-2023) conducted with a community of dancers in Marrakech I try to situate the production in genealogies of multi situated practices and present a perspective that discusses the complexity of the process of legitimation which surrounds the emergence of an artistic practice not carried by elites.