Parkour

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(Le) Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK) or art du déplacement^[1] (English: art of displacement) is a physical art of French origin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using the abilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls — so parkour can be practiced in both rural and urban areas. Male parkour practitioners are recognized as traceurs and female as traceuses.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Terminology 3 History 4 Philosophy 5 Movements 5.1 Basic movements 6 Free running 7 In popular culture 7.1 Films 7.2 Television 7.3 Literature 7.4 Video games 7.5 Music videos 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Overview

Parkour is a physical activity that is difficult to categorize. It is definitely not an extreme sport, but an art that resembles martial arts. However, most traceurs are content to simply put parkour in its own category: "parkour is parkour".

The most characteristic aspect of parkour is efficiency. The basic meaning of this is that a traceur must not merely move as fast as he can, but move in a way that is the least energy-consuming and simultaneously the most direct. In addition, since parkour's unofficial motto is être et durer (to be and to last), efficiency also involves avoiding injuries, short and long-term.

According to the founder David Belle, the spirit of parkour is guided in part by the notions of "escape" and "reach", that is, the idea of using quick thinking with dexterity to get out of difficult situations, and to be able to go anywhere that one desires.

[edit] Terminology

• The name parkour IPA: [/paʁ.'kuʁ/] was thought of by Herbert Kuonde, — a friend of David Belle, but not a practitioner — and it derives from parcours du combattant, the obstacle courses proposed by Georges Hébert method and a classic of French military training. Kuonde took the word parcours, replaced the "c" with a "k" to suggest aggressiveness, and removed the silent "s" as it opposed parkour's philosophy about efficiency.

• Traceur [tʁa.'sœʁ] is the substantive derived from the verb "tracer". Tracer normally means "to trace", or "to draw", but also translates as "going fast".^[2]

[edit] History

Inspiration for parkour came from many sources, the foremost being the 'Natural Method of Physical Culture' developed by Georges Hébert in the early twentieth century.^[3] French soldiers in Vietnam were inspired by Hébert's work and created what is now known parcours du combattant.^{[citation needed]} David Belle was introduced to the art as well as Hébert's methode naturelle by his father, Raymond Belle, a French soldier who practiced the two disciplines. David Belle had participated in activities such as martial arts and gymnastics, and sought to apply his athletic prowess in a manner that would have practical use in life.^[4]

After moving to Lisses, David Belle continued his journey with others.^[4] "From then on we developed," says Sébastien Foucan in Jump London, "And really the whole town was there for us; there for parkour. You just have to look, you just have to think, like children." This, as he describes, is "the vision of parkour."

Over the years as dedicated practitioners improved their skills, their moves continued to grow in magnitude, so that building-to-building jumps and drops of over a story became common in media portrayals, often leaving people with a slanted view on the nature of parkour. In fact, ground-based movement is much more common than anything involving rooftops.

The journey of parkour from the Parisian suburbs to its current status as a widely practiced activity outside of France created splits among the originators. The founders of parkour started out in a group named the Yamakasi, but later separated due to disagreements over what David Belle referred to as "prostitution of the art," the production of a feature film starring the Yamakasi in 2001. Sébastien Foucan, David Belle, were amongst those who split at this point. The name 'Yamakasi' is taken from Lingala, a language spoken in the Congo, and means strong spirit, strong body, strong man.

[edit] Philosophy

This is a main part of the physical art that most of the “non-traceurs” have not seen or heard about, yet according to the founding fathers of the physical art it is an integral part of parkour, in the words of David Belle and originally by Brendan Eiznekcem:

“I want to live and share what I have learned, not just write it in a book that will make it a dead activity and we don’t want the sport to die”.

It as much as a part of truly learning the physical art as well as being able to master the movements, it gives you the ability to “overcome your fears and pains and reapply this to life” as you must be able to control your mind in order to master the art of parkour.

Andreas Kalteis, an Austrian traceur, has stated in documentary Parkour Journeys:

"To understand the philosophy of parkour takes quite a while, because you have to get used to it first. While you still have to try to actually do the movements, you will not feel much about the philosophy. But when you're able to move in your own way, then you start to see how parkour changes other things in your life; and you approach problems — for example in your job — differently, because you have been trained to overcome obstacles. This sudden realization comes at a different time to different people: some get it very early, some get it very late. You can't really say 'it takes two months to realize what parkour is'. So, now, I don't say 'I do parkour', but 'I live parkour', because its philosophy has become my life, my way to do everything." ^[5]

[edit] Movements

There are fewer predefined movements in parkour than gymnastics and other extreme sports, in that parkour is not made up of a list of appropriate "moves". Each obstacle a traceur faces presents a unique challenge on how they can overcome it effectively, which depends on their body type, speed and angle of approach, the physical make-up of the obstacle, etc. Parkour is about training the body and mind to be able to react to those obstacles appropriately with a technique that works; many times that technique cannot and need not be classified and given a name. According to David Belle, you want to move in such a way that will help you gain the most ground as if escaping or chasing toward someone/something. Also, wherever you go, you must be able to get back, if you go from A to B, you need to be able to get back from B to A,^[6] but not necessarily with the same movements or passements. Despite this, there are many basic techniques that are emphasized to beginners for their versatility and effectiveness.

Most important are good jumping and landing techniques. The roll, used to limit impact after a drop and to carry one's momentum onward, is often stressed as the most important technique to learn. Many traceurs develop joint problems from too many large drops and rolling incorrectly.

[edit] Basic movements

Synonym		Description
French	English
Atterrissage or réception	Landing	Bending the knees when toes make contact with ground (never land flat footed; always land on toes).
Équilibre	Balance	Walking or crawling along the crest of an obstacle; literally "balance."
Équilibre de chat	Cat balance	Quadrupedal movement along the crest of an obstacle.
Franchissement [fʁɑ̃.ʃis.mɑ̃]	Underbar, jump through	Jumping or swinging through a gap between obstacles; literally "to cross" or "to break through."
Lâché [la.ʃe]	Dismount, swinging jump	Hanging drop; lacher literally meaning "to let go." To hang or swing (on a bar, on a wall, on a branch) and let go, dropping to the ground or to hang from another object.
Passe muraille [pas my.ʁaɪ]	Pop vault, wall hop	Overcoming a wall, usually by use of a kick off the wall to transform forward momentum into upward momentum. A passe muraille with two hand touches, for instance one touch on the top of a wall and another grabbing the top of the railing of the wall, is called a "Dyno".
Passement [pas.mɑ̃]	Vault	General term of overcoming an obstacle by vaulting.
Demitour [dəmi tuʁ]	Turn vault	A vault involving a 180° turn; literally "half turn." This move is used to place yourself hanging from the other side of an object in order to shorten a drop or prepare for a jump.
	Reverse vault	A vault involving a 360° rotation such that the traceur's back faces forward as they pass the obstacle. The purpose of the rotation is ease of technique in the case of otherwise awkward body position or loss of momentum prior to the vault.
Planche [plɑ̃ʃ]	Muscle up or climb-up	To get from a hanging position (wall, rail, branch, arm jump, etc) into a position where your upper body is above the obstacle, supported by the arms. This then allows for you to climb up onto the obstacle and continue.
Roulade [ʁu.lad]	Roll	A forward roll where the hands, arms and diagonal of the back contact the ground. Used primarily to transfer the momentum/energy from jumps.
Saut de bras [so d bra]	Arm jump	To land on the side of an obstacle in a hanging/crouched position, the hands gripping the top edge, holding the body, ready to perform a planche.
Saut de chat [so d ʃa]	Cat jump/pass, (king) kong vault	To dive forward over an obstacle so that the body becomes horizontal, push off with the hands and tuck the legs, such that the body is brought back to a vertical position, ready to land.
Saut de fond [so d fɔ̃]	Drop	Literally 'jump to the ground' / 'jump to the floor'. To jump down, or drop down from something.
Saut de détente	Gap jump	To jump from one place/object to another, over a gap/distance. This technique is most often followed with a roll.
Saut de précision [so d presiziɔ̃]	Precision jump	Static jump from one object to a precise spot on another object.
Tic Tac [tik tak]	Tic Tac	To kick off a wall in order to overcome another obstacle or gain height to grab something.

[edit] Free running

Main article: Free running

In September 2003 the documentary Jump London aired on Channel 4, a public-service British television station, broadcast to all areas of the United Kingdom. It featured Sebastien Foucan, Jerome Ben Aoues, and Johann Vigroux, former training partners of David Belle. A producer named Guillaume Pelletier offered the term 'freerunning' to Foucan as a way for English speakers to better understand parkour. This was a natural progression for Foucan since he had parted with Belle in order to promote his own "way" which focused on beautiful flowing movement, rather than speed and efficiency.

Jump London opens with this quote, "This is Parkour, the anarchic new sport of Freerunning. Freerunning is a new urban sport and was created by Sebastien Foucan, born out of the childhood games of him and his friends." With two brief sentences from the narrator, with the help of Pelletier, Foucan renamed Belle's art of parkour, and cemented himself as its founder in the minds of people all across the UK. When asked later in an interview, "Why don't you create your own art, instead of changing David Belle's Parkour to suit your opinions?" Foucan replied, "I don't want to create anything…people wanted!...I never change anything." When juxtaposed with the content of his website, where he proudly states that he co-founded parkour, this quote seems conflicting. Foucan co-founding the discipline is not entirely true since Belle and others were practicing before he joined them. There were other aspects of Foucan's site site that did not coincide with this quote. He outlined the philosophy of his method, stated how he coined several relevant parkour terms, and claimed himself as a parkour Ambassador to the world. Foucan would also state that, "freerunning was an idea of…Guillaume Pelletier who worked with us at the time of Jump London. He really thought free running was a better way to understand parkour and I believed him because my English wasn't so good."

Although the terms parkour and freerunning were used synonymously in the documentary, Jump London featured Foucan's ideas rather than Belle's parkour. Foucan took elements of parkour and mixed them with his own ideas saying that you must move forward, but also emphasizing the movement being fantastic, pretty, and elegant rather than efficient. Naming Foucan as the founder of parkour gave the film credibility and made it more marketable. Although it was beneficial for the producers to have the star of their film be "the founder," omitting David Belle would benefit Foucan's career as well. This was the beginning of the mass confusion about the definition of parkour that exists today.

Free running is a term the meaning of which was once identical to parkour. However, after David Belle and Sébastien Foucan went separate ways, free running evolved into an art that emphasized on aesthetics, and thus was concerned more with grace and the beauty of movement, than efficiency. For example, Foucan speaks of being "fluid like water," a frequently used simile for the smooth passage of barriers through the use of free running. Similarly, experienced free runner Jerome Ben Aoues explains in the documentary Jump London that "the most important element is the harmony between you and the obstacle; the movement has to be elegant... If you manage to pass over the fence elegantly — that's beautiful, rather than saying 'I jumped the lot.' What's the point in that?" It should be noted, however, that there are still times when people mistakenly use the term parkour and traceur instead of free running and free runner, mostly because they are ignorant of the differences between the two schools of thought. David Belle emphasized the division between parkour and free running and between himself and Sébastien Foucan by stating:

"This art has been created by few soldiers in Vietnam to escape or reach: and this is the spirit I'd like parkour to keep. You have to make the difference between what is useful and what is not in emergency situations. Then you'll know what is parkour and what is not. So if you do acrobatics things on the street with no other goal than showing off, please don't say it's parkour. Acrobatics existed long time before parkour".

Freestyle parkour (FSPK) was put in place by Urban freeflow to describe an activity similar to parkour but with different intentions. Its introduction was met with a large amount of abuse and so Freeflow withdrew the term and their association with it. Later, due to the fact that people still practised this variation of parkour, the term free running was used instead as it had been used in the documentary Jump London. Its popularity was helped by 3run group. The phrase Freestyle parkour has since dropped from mainstream use due to its negative connotations.

[edit] In popular culture

Parkour has appeared in various television advertisements, news reports, and entertainment pieces, sometimes combined with other forms of stunts and acrobatics.

[edit] Films

• After including parkour moves in a chase sequence in the film Taxi 2 (2000), in 2001 French filmmaker Luc Besson made a feature film, Yamakasi—Les samouraï des temps modernes (Yamakasi—the modern-day Samurai), featuring members of the original Yamakasi. The film tells the (fictional) tale of a group of young friends who use their parkour skills to evade capture, while stealing money to fund the healthcare of a child that was injured copying their parkour training. In 2004, Besson wrote Banlieue 13, another feature film involving parkour, starring David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli; English-dubbed and -subtitled versions were released in 2006 as District B-13 in North America, and the U.K.

• The biggest interest surge to date was created by the documentary Jump London, which explained some of the background to parkour and culminated with Sébastien Foucan and two other French traceurs (Johann Vigroux and Jérôme Ben Aoues) demonstrating their parkour skills at many famous London locations: HMS Belfast, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Somerset House and the Tate Gallery and Saatchi galleries amongst them. It is perhaps worth noting that David Belle received no mention in Jump London, despite often being accredited as the most important founder of parkour. Jump London was followed up by the sequel Jump Britain, once again featuring Foucan and Ben Aoues.

• An action sequence in the James Bond film, Casino Royale, is a construction site roof-top chase that implements many aspects of parkour. Sébastien Foucan, the founder of the similar sport free running, plays a small-time terrorist after whom James Bond is chasing. The scene was filmed in Nassau, Bahamas.

• A lengthy chase sequence in the film Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse features parkour.

• Parkour is featured prominently in the 2007 film Breaking and Entering, in which two of the characters employ parkour techniques to burgle an office in the Kings Cross, an area of London.

• The werewolves in the movie Blood and Chocolate used (in their human form) what appeared to be parkour as a demonstration of their superhuman agility.

[edit] Television

• The British public was widely exposed to parkour during 2002 via the BBC television trailer Rush Hour, which depicted David Belle leaping across London's rooftops from his office to home, in an attempt to catch his favourite BBC programme.^[7][8] The piece generated a great deal of discussion, particularly after it was revealed that no special effects or wires were used (although it was partly filmed in Newcastle upon Tyne). It was later re-used for the BBC Children in Need appeal, with the face of Terry Wogan superimposed onto the body of Belle.

• The CSI: NY episode "Tri-Borough"^[9] involves a murdered traceur.

• A series of Nike commercials^[10] depicted traceurs clearing rooftop gaps and stairwells as part of an ad campaign for their Presto line of slip-on running shoes.

• A Toyota Scion commercial^[11] had free runners Sébastien Foucan and Jerome Ben Aoues playing "tag" with two cars in a parking structure.

• A Rogers Wireless mp3 phone commercial features a group of young adults running to meet another group via free running on a rooftop, with a slogan "Tippin' on the brink".

• A Canon commercial with David Belle.^[12]

• An episode of the popular BBC motoring programme Top Gear featured a race between James May in a Peugeot 207 against two traceurs—Daniel Ilabaca and Kerbie from Worldwide JAM's 'Street Team'—in the city of Liverpool on July 23, 2006.^[13] The traceurs won the race to the Liver Building, if only because May, true to character, got lost on his way to the building.

• 'Play Cops and Robbers' is an European advert for Microsoft's Xbox 360 which features a car chase and chases over roof tops and streets all influenced by parkour. One of its stars is Cyril Raffaelli, famous to many as Capt. Damien Tomaso in the 2004 French film Banlieue 13, also starring David Belle.^[14]

• An Irish television advertisement for the shop "Lifestyle Sports" has a traceur jumping shelves in it.

• Cirque Du Soleil's Solstrom featured in one of its episodes, a group of people doing various parkour moves in an airport.

• A recent episode of Bones featured a criminal using Parkour to escape from the police.

[edit] Literature

• Issue 6 of the limited series Global Frequency, written by noted comic book author Warren Ellis, tells the story of a young traceuse named Sita Patel who is tasked with the seemingly impossible task of crossing London in under twenty minutes to defuse a biological weapon. The issue, titled The Run, is a varied and detailed (and mostly believable) treatment of the topic. The series was published by Wildstorm Comics.

• The hip-hop novel Kid B — written by Texas fictionalist Linden Dalecki — tells the story of a teenager named Kid B who's a b-boy in a four-man crew called the Krush Krew. A passage in the novel details an escape by the Krush Krew over rooftops, and another passage, where Kid B trains alone, reads like a free running sequence. The book was first published in 2006 by Houghton Mifflin.

• In Tale of Two Summers by Brian Sloan, the story of a French traceur is relayed by Hal via blogging.

[edit] Video games

• In Resistance: Fall of Man for the Playstation 3 a skill point by the name "le parkour" is awarded for completion of a rooftop level in a set amount of time.

• Assassin's Creed: a game in development by Ubisoft Studios, has character movements inspired by parkour and free running.

• Crackdown is a Xbox 360 action game and it has a parkour feature.^[15]

• Eidos Interactive has announced their intention to publish a parkour video game on the PSP and PS2 platform under the title "Free Running", with a release date still to be announced.^[16]

• Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure: involves some parkour techniques.

• Splinter Cell series games contain many parkour movements.

• Tony Hawk's American Wasteland: one of the several techniques you can learn whilst not on your skateboard is freerunning, although it is called parkour in the game.

• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Trilogy: the game's main character can do movements which are also used in Parkour and Freerunning.

• The Tomb Raider series contains many parkour situations.

• The Urban Dead browser game allows players to purchase the "free running" skill, which allows them to move between adjacent buildings without moving through the streets.

• In Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, players can vault over objects or perform pausse murailles.

[edit] Music videos

• David Guetta has released a new music video for his song Love Don't Let Me Go which features free running extensively throughout it, performed by the British Freerun crew named team Evolution.^[17]

• Eric Prydz vs Floyd - Proper Education is about saving energy by using parkour in it to promote the facts of Global Warming.^[18]

• German singer Liza Li chases after German traceur Moses Kallweit in both cartoon and real life scenes on her video for the song "Ich könnte dich erschießen".^[19]

• Madonna featured free running extensively in the Jump music video.^[20] Madonna also featured free running on her world tour in 2006 The Confessions Tour as well as featuring it initially in her music video for Hung Up. All the free running sequences for Madonna were created and executed by Sebastian Foucan, Mike 'Frosti' Zernow, Levi 'Skynative' Meeuwenberg and others.

• Paul Oakenfold released a song with Brittany Murphy called Faster Kill Pussycat which had some parkour in its music video performed by a few PKCali traceurs including Paul 'PD' Darnell and Cliff 'CAK010' Kravit.^[21]

• Persian singer Mehran recently has released a music video named Kaboutar (dove) featuring two Iranian traceurs of Rahaa clan that bring a dove to him.

• Die Trying has a music video for their song Oxygen's Gone that features two or three traceurs.

[edit] See also

• Buildering — the act of climbing the outside of buildings and other urban structures.
• George Hébert — early proponent of the obstacle course, inspiration to Belle (father and son).
• Free climbing — a style of climbing using no artificial aids to make progress.
• Tricking — a sport with roots in different forms of martial arts and gymnastics (often mistaken for parkour by the media and public).
• Street stunts — "Urban gymnastics" an extreme activity usually practiced both by Free Runners and Tricksters.
• Yamakasi — a physical art David Belle founded 3 years before parkour with emphasis on style, fluidity and freedom and a 2001 movie.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• (French) Blog Officiel - Parkour - David Belle's Official Blog
• Parkour.NET - International Parkour community
• American Parkour - Parkour community based in America