In the midst of the closure of the public space, marked by the last Argentine civic-military dictatorship (1976-1983), ephemeral festive spaces were created, of enjoyment of the body through dance and music. This article adopts Jacques Rancière's notion of aesthetic efficacy - understood as the distance between the artist's intention, the resources he uses, the viewer's gaze and the state of a community - to analyze the senses that emerge from different alternative festive manifestations promoted by the military regime. For this, the following groups are studied: Escuela de Mimo Contemporáneo and the Taller de Investigaciones Teatrales, of Buenos Aires; Grupo de Arte Experimental Cucaño, from Rosario, and the rock band Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota, from La Plata. The strategies that these groups deployed to elude the surveillance of the military regime and how in their artistic practices emerged the festive rituals as a collective space between the public and the private that reconfigured the possibility of being together, are investigated.