That's the question asked by a west African girl her Taiwanese friend in a new radio play produced by RTI. 

The play is based on a picture storybook, also called "Can We Dance Now", written and illustrated by Katherine Curtiss and Dave Peters. It's part one in a three-part series called "Tales from an Outlying Island". All three plays in the series are based on storybooks written by a group of dedicated young Fulbright scholars based on the outlying Taiwanese island of Kinmen as part of the English Teaching Assistantship program in 2012-2013.

The authors worked with RTI's Andrew Ryan to convert the storybooks into radio plays, and in many cases they played the voices of the characters as well! The authors are Dave Peters (who plays the role of the narrator) and Katherine Curtiss (who plays Shao Ting). Also featured are: the two Gambian women who played the west African characters; Joy Huang, the Taiwanese woman who played Shao Ting's mama; and RTI's Andrew Ryan.

Be sure to tune in next week for part two: "Home for the Winter", the story of a bird named Lucas who travels with his family from Siberia to Kinmen.