Contemporary dance for 9 year old?

[Obeliskherder]

My 9 year old has only been doing ballet for a couple of years. She really wants to do contemporary dance. There aren't many such classes around for her age group, but I've found one at a local theatre.

However her ballet school doesn't run contemporary classes for 9 year olds and her teacher says she'd need to start with modern and work up.

Who should I believe, the theatre or the ballet teacher? And how difficult would it be to start modern at 9 with only limited experience of ballet? This is all very much just for fun, and the modern would be logistically easier for me.

Yes my dd has had lots of such teachers. Creative & technique.

And the be a tree style I've seen has mostly come from unqualified secondary school teachers.

DD started Ballet & Contemporary at the same age (yr9) she massive struggled with contemporary despite gaining grade 5 within 8 months of starting. She did it both at school for BTec Dance and within a specialist school (CAT) she has continued with is for the 5 yrs since.

This summer, after 2 yrs of vocational school she (at 18) says she is starting to see the merits/complexities of contemporary and studies Horton, Graham, Cunningham & is release another one? I get confused She says doing it younger was no advantage and actually made it harder to do properly; she feels even with the next 2 yrs at college she will still need regular lessons in Contemporary (& after dancing with a company this week it's something she is desperate to do)

However her Modern (& tap) she started about 4 months later than Ballet & contemporary) and she is now well on the way to being a qualified teacher

Lots of people 'do' or 'learn' "contemporary" but what that is, doing it well and understanding it are completely different.