"Dance has become exceedingly popular over the past two years"

When it comes to documentaries, it’s vital to escape whichever preconceptions you originally had of the subject matter and enjoy the feature for what it is. Some of the greatest documentaries ever made haven’t necessarily been about interesting topics to begin with. All it can take is one brilliant character, Anton Newcombe in DiG!, for example, and suddenly the film is entirely worthwhile.

I think it’s fair to say that gypsy weddings weren’t exactly of interest to too many people in the UK six months ago, but due to the magnetism of the characters and the implausible situations from the Channel Four documentary ‘My Big Fat Gyspy Wedding’, it is now one of the most popular and talked about series of recent years.

Unfortunately though, despite initially putting myself in the right frame of mind, I still struggled to fully enjoy Jig.

It follows a group of young children and teenagers, both male and female, competing in the Irish dancing World Championships, held in Glasgow in 2010. It doesn’t sound particularly interesting, and sadly for filmmaker Sue Bourne, it didn’t prove to be either.

As a filmmaker, making a documentary takes an incredible amount of luck. Take TT3D: Closer to the Edge, for instance. The feature, in cinemas now, also features a subject matter I knew very little about – motorcycle racing. However, due to the drama of a fatality within the film and the charisma of lead racer Guy Martin, the feature was thoroughly watchable. Director Richard De Aragues wasn’t to predict this, and simply got lucky with his choice of characters to follow, and despite the devastation surrounding the death of racer Paul Dobbs, it ironically enhanced the viewers’ experience of the film, as it added desolation and melancholy.

However, Jig just doesn’t have the strength in characters or story-line to make it interesting enough. The children that are focused on are sweet and loveable – but we don’t want sweet and loveable. We want horrid children who we despise and want to fail, that would make it far more interesting at least. Instead the characters are featureless and, well, simply too nice. The story also fails to take any serious twists, as it follows quite a standard formula throughout – again no fault of the director.

It’s a shame for Sue Bourne, as the primary idea is good. The world of Irish dancing is one untouched by the media, and to shed a light into a world that we, the audience, are unsure of, has much potential. However, with little luck in the proceedings of the film, Bourne is left with a somewhat lacklustre feature.

A saving grace for the film could have been the dancing itself, but, despite the interesting choice of fashion provided to the kids participating in the tournament – that of illustrious wigs and colourful outfits – the performances just aren’t remarkable enough.

Dance has become exceedingly popular over the past two years. With talent shows such as Britain’s Got Talent dominated by successful and mesmerising dance acts such as Flawless and Diversity, and even dance talent competitions in their own right, such as the recent So You Think You Can Dance, and the ever-successful Strictly Come Dancing, it seems that dance is admired again. However, the dancing we have been watching and enjoying in recent years, such as that of street-dancing outfit Flawless – has been exciting and off-the-wall. It’s innovative and diverse and it’s enhanced dancing as a performance within this country, making it a more fashionable and accessible form of art.

Irish dancing, however, is too formulaic. It’s just kids tapping their feet, and despite the incredible talent that goes into it and the hard work and dedication that the young dancers put into their work – it just doesn’t compare as a spectacle to other successful, contemporary forms of dance.

Also, the documentary would have benefited greatly in my opinion if it had been on television. In order to warrant a big-screen release it needs to have something different about it, and perhaps had it been on TV, it would have been more enjoyable as the pressure is off somewhat.
Sitting down with a cup of tea and watching an average documentary in your own front room feels much more justified, than spending money and travelling to a cinema for what is – essentially – a run of the mill feature film.