Not everyone thinks young Kenyans like Joel Kioko should spend their lives pursuing ballet. Ballet is a very specific form of dancing that comes from Europe. But the Kenyan dancers aren’t European. They’re African. African culture has shaped the way they move and think. Shouldn’t they be doing African dances instead?

Christy Adair is a professor of dance studies at York St. John University in England. She thinks people at ballet organizations can be too arrogant. “They think theirs is the (only) way for training for dance,” she says. It is true that ballet is an old art form with very specific moves. These moves have French names. You will see ballerinas working for hours at a barre to get their arabesques and tendus just right. These dancers train hard for years, disciplining their bodies.

A traditional Kenyan dance is very different from ballet. In a Kenyan dance, a person might shake his or her shoulders or waist and stamp his or her feet. Some people suggest Kenyans learn African dance or hip-hop dance instead of ballet. Hip-hop is very different from ballet too. Ballet is complex and orderly. Ballet dancers usually dance to classical music without lyrics. Every move will look the same no matter who performs it. Hip-hop dancers move to hip-hop music, which usually tells real-life stories with a bouncy beat and rhyming words. Hip-hop dancers get to make new moves up as they go along. In that way, they express themselves. Some think Africans could combine traditional African moves into the loose structure of hip-hop.

It can be very good to want to show pride for your homeland. But it can be good to learn new things from other parts of the world too. Ballet has brought Joel great joy. “From the beginning, when he joined the ballet, there was nothing else he could talk about,” says his mother. “It was just ballet, ballet, ballet. So I saw that he was happy, and so I was happy too.”