This paper examines the relationships between performance, memory, and the archive.  I venture into an exploration of the role of the museum in archiving performative practices, more specifically the collection of movement. How is history carried on the body? How do we begin to grasp the memories displayed in dance? How to archive a kinesthetic history? I discuss these issues with particular attention to contemporary negotiations of globalization through the embodiment of diasporic memory.  I look at the local body politics of Latino social dance practices in relation to the commercial globalization of the Latin Explosion phenomena of recent years. I position the embodied practices of dancing as practices of grassroots globalization (Appadurai 2001)—negotiations of the global from below. Materials discussed include an oral history interview with Vincent Livelli conducted in 2000 for the National Museum of American History’s Latino Music Project and ethnographic data on Latina/o social dance conducted in Austin and San Antonio, TX, New York City and Rochester, NY from 1998-2002.