But it's fifteen plus years ago since that first happened and the impact of that is wearing off so they were looking for another injection to tell the world about Irish Dancing.
And then I suppose I came along, and without making too much about it, if an award winning filmmaker comes along and says I want to make a film you have to think 'well it's got a better chance of reaching a wider market with her'.
They had seen my films and liked me and I just said 'You have to trust me. I make films that are honest and true and you are going to have to take a big punt'
Because they were saying 'well we can control it' and I said: 'Absolutely not! I come in and make the film that I want to make with total freedom and if you are not willing to accept that then it won't happen'. And they were like 'ok', opened the door and let me in and never interfered at all.
- The movie follows these young kids through hours of training as well as talking to families and teacher over a period of two years so what were the difficulties that you faced during the filming process?
We spent a lot of time doing our research we talk to people and get to know them as we try to work out what are the best stories.
Jig is ninety three minutes long so you can't have stories that are telling you the same thing you need variety and you need each of the characters to bring something different to the film.
You start researching it and very soon you start hearing about the interesting stories or you know that you find interesting - so that took us a long time.
Then we were ready to film, by then everyone knew me and my associate producer really well, and than was just a mammoth task - the four of us went round the world together filming with them before the competition.
Then we went to the competition, that's nine intense days of fifteen hour day - we would be there with them when they got up in the morning and follow them through the day right up to the results.
- Jig shows that this is a very competitive world - one woman says that she didn't care if her daughter could read or write - how taken aback were you by the level of competitiveness?
With anything when you are at the top it's competitive - you can take swimmers, tennis players, golfers anything - so I don't think that Irish Dancing is any more or less than any other sport or art form that's competitive at that level, they want to win.
What I find really interesting about Irish Dancing is it's not about financial gain; with tennis protégés or golf protégés there is always a bit pot of money and I think that's where you find parents who sometimes push their children because their child has a talent and the parents can see the money at the end of it, this is the opposite of that.
There is no money in it at all - all there is is poverty and sacrifice for the parents because they have to pay and they ain’t going to get any money.
When I said to people that I was doing this movie they said 'lots of pushy parents' but I thought you can not push your child to do what these kids do if the child doesn't want to do it. Ten year olds doing three or four hours a day - you couldn't make your child do that because it's hard and physical work.
It's as if the dance casts a spell over these children. There's a wee boy in it called John and he has five brothers who all played football - but John wanted to dance and it was like it was in his soul he just couldn't be stopped. Where did that come from? There's no Irish, there's no connection it was just in his soul and that seemed to be the way with a lot of people that we met.
- You said that you knew very little about Irish Dancing before Jig so what have you learnt during putting this film together?
I am not a dancer. I was kicked out of ballet school at the age of four the teacher told my mother not to waste her money. I have two left feet; I have no rhythm so I didn't really get it.
I watched some of the dances in this film, one in particular he is one of the best dancers in the world and two minutes on his feet and my jaw drops - he is just mesmerising. I never thought that that would happen to me, but it did.
- You have been behind a whole host of documentary projects over the years so what is it about this genre of film that you love so much?
Any film that I do I spend a long time on it, this has taken three or four times longer than usual because it's a much big scale; it's a feature film and not just for telly, and I have to be curious about it and I have to be fascinated about what I am about to do and what I am about to find out.
But what I think I love more than anything, what motivates me, I like being with ordinary people but I like finding the extraordinary in those people - if I was to say what motivates me it would be that because everyone has got a story and everybody has something of interest to say you just have to look and find it.
- Jig is your first feature length documentary for the big screen so how did you find the transition into cinema?
Fascinating. It's terrific to be at my age and my stage in my career to do something completely new - it was new and you do have to work differently. The scale of film is different, the way you shoot it is different, the way you edit it is different and it was just fantastic.
At my age I was learning masses and I was on this very steep learning curve and it's been fascinating. I would love to do it again - I have got a bit of a taste for it.
- Finally what's next for you?
I do have two new films and I would love to get funding for them and try and get them off the ground. But at the moment I'm just trying to get Jig out. Hopefully if Jug does well then it might help me get the next big project so that's what my hope is.
Jig is released 6th May.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw