Not Your Grandma's Jump! Rope

Snowboarding, snowboard cross, skicross - all are events recently added to and flourishing in the Olympic games.

Could the next one be...jump rope?

The Wilton Library hosted its first in a series of documentary film showings and studies on Wednesday night, starting with a viewing, discussion and even a demonstration of the movie "Jump!" Some 75 attendees gathered in the Brubeck Room and were treated to an inside look into what has grown from a somewhat obscure gym class requirement to a worldwide movement.

The evening began with a demonstration by the Moon Jumpers, a Newtown-based group of young athletes, performing a variety of complex single rope and double dutch tricks on stage. The group is affiliated with the town's Parks and Recreation Department and has been in existence for about three and a half years, and even has its own Facebook page.

Following the ten-minute, acrobatic introduction, Megan Smith-Harris, who is leading the documentary series and is herself a filmmaker, talked briefly about tbe film and then invited the audience to sit back and relax.

The relaxation didn't come so easy.

"Jump!" is around 80 minutes long and is at once tear-jerking, gut-wrenching, laugh-inducing and heart-racing. It was financed and directed entirely by Helen Hood Scheer, a documentary filmmaker who lives in California and was inspired by a jump rope competition she saw one day on ESPN.

Scheer was intrigued by the sport's athleticism and camraderie and immediately began looking for subjects to follow for a film. She ended up with a wide variety of ages, backgrounds and even genders, lead by 12-year-old Tori, a type-A personality, asthmatic and world champion jump roper.

The film follows Tori and a number of other teams from around the country, from West Virginia to Ohio, showing their grueling six-hour-long workouts and their various trials and tribulations that lead up to the national and world championships. It is set to a cool soundtrack of hip hop and jazz, provides some historical context for the sport (it was originally brought to America in the 1600s by, who else, the Dutch and in the 1800s was still considered strictly a boys' game, as young ladies apparently risked bursting blood vessels if they participated), and is masterfully edited, showing a mind-numbing and muscle-tiring array of some of the craziest tricks you've ever seen.

Perhaps the most striking part of the film, outside of the astounding acrobatics and syncopation of the jumpers, is the vibrant subculture of what is becoming an increasingly popular sport. From somewhat humble beginnings, jump rope now has competitions in 36 countries and five continents worldwide. Many of the athletes and organizers, alike, hope it will eventually be included in the Olympics, which may occur once the sport has officially spread to 75 countries, all competing by the same rules.

"Jump!" also touches on jump roping's purity, showing that while competition and training are still intense, it remains largely devoid of the aggression and negativity that can be characteristic of the world's more renowned sports. As the coach of a West Virginia jump roping team says at one point, "this sport hasn't been completely ruined by competition yet because it's still friendly."

But friendly or not, there are real struggles evident in the film. Tori, for example, has fairly serious asthma and at points she can be seen crying in pain following competition as she wheezes and gasps for air. And due to the acrobatic nature of many of their moves, there are some brutal mishaps during their practices as well. One young boy puts it best when he says, "To be a national champion, you have to hurt for it."

We can't, of course, tell you how it all ends up. You'll have to see that for yourself.

Suffice it to say that Scheer's film has shown at over 30 festivals around the country and won a variety of accolades. That is testament both to her own hard work (she shot around 1,000 hours of footage and whittled it down to 85 minutes over the course of 18 months of editing) and to the budding popularity of the sport.

And the next generation could be growing up in Connecticut's own backyard if the Moon Jumpers are any indication.

For those interested in joining or participating in the Moon Jumpers' activities and competitions, we will have contact information for them soon.

Keep an eye out for the next film in the documentary series later in March.