This paper explores popular cultural expressions in contemporary Syria as a site of contestation between public forms of youth participation shaped by governmental efforts and intimate practices performed among urban youth in diversely situated contexts. These discursive links between public forms and local practices can be historically traced to the emergence of youth as a category for social and cultural development according to Baathist strategies for self-determination. In particular, state-based practices of cultural nationalism have and continue to turn to dabke as a social dance in ways that not only signify forms of cultural intimacy but also depend on the ascription of symbolic resources to youth as a discursive category. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Damascus, Aleppo, Lattakia, and non-urban regions of Syria in 2008, this paper looks at the aspirations of youth within comparative, and at times overlapping, categories of students working towards professions in medicine, dentistry, and law, and those in pursuit of artistic success in the performing arts. In particular, I will compare the display of public intimacy through social dance in spaces of leisure and consumption among youth in everyday life. In what ways do expressions of popular culture suggest aesthetic choices that obey a particular logic of taste (Bourdieu 1984)? How is the production of taste guided by "body techniques" (Mauss 1979) and other tactics that appropriate style through appearance, consumption, and spectacular performances of dabke at social events? What discursive categories emerge in relation to differences of gender, class, and faith within these social contexts? These intimate practices are linked to the public display of popular culture that is changing in accordance with major shifts in cultural policy. Working in affiliation with President Bashar al-Asad, a new generation of cultural elite are expanding performing arts venues, transforming existing spaces, and implementing programs that attract youth as participants and audiences. What discourses are embedded in these institutional practices and how do these emerge in relation to broader contexts of social market reform, media consumption, and cultural tourism? I will argue that Syrian national identity is produced by popular culture expressions and representations in ways that at once hinge upon the aspirations and desires of young people and resignify youth as a discursive means towards developmental resources. By offering ethnographic insights into the ways in which Syrian youth and cultural administrators are negotiating change through popular culture, I hope to intimate ways of being a modern subject that brings closer particularly Syrian experiences of belonging.