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As the rope turns
Jump-roping: think playgrounds, think street corners, think about the thwack of the rope as it peppers the pavement. But jump-roping at the Apollo Theater? Backflips? Double dutch routines that incorporate hip-hop dance and showmanship? Clearly we’ve graduated from the playground to something grander, and in this case it’s the world of competitive jump-roping.
If you’re looking for a tour guide through this world, seek out Stephanie Johnes ’93, whose film, Doubletime, follows two jump-rope teams from the American South that compete against each other for the first time at the Apollo Theater. One team, the Bouncing Bulldogs from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is predominantly white and ranked first in its league; the other, the Double Dutch Forces from Columbia, South Carolina, is predominantly black and ranked first in its league as well. The leagues are entirely separate from one another — the Double Dutch Forces compete in a double dutch-only league, always using two ropes, and the Bouncing Bulldogs compete in a league that features both double dutch and single-rope events.
 Ms. Johnes discovered the Bouncing Bulldogs while she was attending journalism school at UNC-Chapel Hill and decided to make a short film about them. “It’s so exciting when you feel like you’ve discovered something the world hasn’t seen,” she said. “When I saw the kids jump-roping, I thought, ‘This would blow people away.’ I wanted to share it.”
Ms. Johnes began spending time with the Bulldogs and filming them but didn’t yet know that her footage might yield a full-length documentary. She later found out about the Double Dutch Forces and decided to film them as well, but it wasn’t until both teams decided to compete at the Apollo Theater’s Holiday Classic that the story line became clear.
“Life is not a three-act structure. Life has no narrative arc. Life is not perfect storytelling,” Ms. Johnes said, enumerating what she described as the classic problem of documentary filmmaking. “The two teams didn’t know each other, so it was completely lucky that they decided to go [to the Apollo],” she added.
Doubly lucky. The acrobatics, agility and timing that the jumpers demonstrate is eye candy enough, but observing the dichotomy between the two teams as they prep for the Holiday Classic is fascinating. Issues of race and class surface, but at the center of it all is the kids’ dedication to pushing themselves as far as possible within their sport. The Holiday Classic demands it: It’s a worldwide fusion competition, in which jump-rope routines incorporate hip-hop music and dancing, and both the Bouncing Bulldogs and the Double Dutch Forces are new to fusion. Both teams struggle to invent routines worthy of their champion status in a genre for which they’ve never trained. They learn they’ll be facing teams from Japan that have long dominated fusion jump-roping with martial-arts-inspired choreography and inimitable flair.
So how do the two teams fare? As Ms. Johnes said, life is not perfect storytelling, but the denouement at the Apollo is satisfying nonetheless. “It’s a positive, uplifting film,” Ms. Johnes added. “People need that.”
Doubletime, which has been shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, South by Southwest Film Festival and the Fringe festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, will be released theatrically and air on the Discovery Channel in 2008. Tune in. You’ll never look at jump-roping the same way again.
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