This research project investigates how the black population living in the municipality of São Paulo, SP, mobilized around the so-called Bailes Blacks. Especially in its periphery-center relationship, this social conjuncture produced strategies for survival in a territory demarcated by attempts at erasure, racial segregation and displacement within this urban fabric. These movements — from regions located on the edges of the city to strategic meeting points in the central region — are recognized as generating territorialities in transformation, constituting a field of constant socio-economic, symbolic and, especially, political disputes. Against the backdrop of a dynamic of meeting and socializing of peers, this type of appropriation in the city of São Paulo — especially through dance and music — has allowed for the formation of what is characterized in the work as a type of festive knowledge. The research was conducted using a methodology that analyzed the history of the black population s relationship with dances in Brazil: from the post-abolition period, with clubs; through associations, such as the Black Press and the Brazilian Black Front; and culminating with the Black Dances, which are highlighted in a time frame that began in the late 1950s until the mid-1980s. As research techniques for this dissertation, a literature review was carried out - which considered the in-depth study of articles on the subject.