While the young contemporary French dance of the 80’s took off and asserted an unprecedented legitimacy, self-taught dancers inflamed the Parisian dance floor and created the most underground tendency of what will later be called hip hop dance. Two worlds which today are revealed to each other between attempts at democratization on the one hand and institutionalization on the other. This is what James B. reveals, which calls on emancipation of bodies through dancing pleasure beyond the usual divisions. The artists’s imaginary spreads both among the audience and on the stage, defying the stereotyped borders between the spectacular form of the show and the ambitious choreographic writing. Dance is inspired by a musical register which takes roots in soul and is embodied alternately in jazz rock, hip hop contemporary, African repertory, in a pulsation that reveals its timeless character.