A teenager from the notorious Kuwinda slum in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, has been awarded a place at the English National Ballet School in London, even though he has never seen a full-length ballet on stage.
Joel Kioko, 17, who has also been offered a scholarship, took up dancing only three years ago after he followed a female cousin to ballet classes in Nairobi. He intended “to make a nuisance of himself”.
“He only went along to annoy her before, effectively, gatecrashing the lessons,” said Emma Flett, whose Flett Films made a seven-minute short about Kioko when he was in the UK for his audition in April.
Recalling his first lessons in Nairobi, Kioko says in the film, Joel’s Story: “I thought, what is this strange dance? It is not like Kenyan dancing. So I did not fall in love with ballet straight away.
“But when we did the men’s class and I could jump and turn, I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life.”
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He now feels the responsibility of showing that dance can be a route out of poverty as well as a passion.
“The kids back home don’t have anything. So I’m an example to them. And, if I mess up, I think they’re going to be just done for. That’s the pressure I feel,” he said.
In March more than 2,000 people were made homeless when a fire started swept the Kuwinda slum.
Kioko, who was recommended to the ballet school by his American-born teacher in Nairobi, Cooper Rust, is an athletic dancer with similarities to his hero, Carlos Acosta, in his ability to leap, twist and turn. Acosta originally came from a poor background in Cuba.
While in London, Kioko met Tom Holland, star of the new Spider-Man film, whose acting breakthrough was in the stage version of Billy Elliot. Holland is an ambassador for the Nairobi-based charity the Lunchbowl Network, which looks after vulnerable youngsters and where Kioko now helps out.
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Joel’s Story, to be screened at the ITV Studios in London on Thursday, will help to raise about £20,000 for Kioko’s living costs.
“It’s amazing that I learnt my dance moves here in London and you in Africa,” Holland says in the film. “But they are the same moves. An amazing connection.”