Recent History of Parkour
Ness, Luke, and Kai
David Belle, with the help of others, turned parkour into what it is today. Only recently has it achieved a spot in the media bringing it public attention. Though its roots date back to the beginning of time only now has it turned into a sport of its own.
David Belle and Sebastian Foucan are the two people most commonly associated with the start of Parkour. When David Belle moved to Lisses, France to start his military career, he met Sebastian Foucan and other members of the soon to be Yamakasi. Yamakasi is a parkour team that David Belle and Sebastian Foucan helped found in 1997. Neither of them are currently members of the team. Yamakasi began without a definition of parkour, but they had the same idea of surmounting urban obstacles as efficiently as possible. The Yamakasi referred to parkour as “L’ Art du deplacement.” What caused David and Sebastian to split from the group was a disagreement over the essence of Parkour. David stood fast with the fact that parkour was about efficiency while the members of Yamakasi talked about the freedom of movement including flips and tricks in their movements.
Yamakasi along with other teams helped to get Parkour into the spotlight of pop culture. In 2001 Yamakasi released a film, bearing the same name as the team. In 2004 they released a sequel called “Les Fils du Vent.” Both these movies as well as “Banlieue 13,” starring David Belle, launched parkour into the public eye. A game called Free Running came out in 2007 starring Sebastian Foucan and other famous traceurs, parkour practitioners. Parkour also has a huge online community. If you type “parkour” into YouTube today it will turn up 62,700 videos. There is no end to the amount of online forums and videos that people post about parkour. Obviously parkour has a hold on the culture of today.
Teams and online groups make up a large part of the Parkour community and public image. In 2003, before “Les Fils du Vent” was released by Yamakasi, a UK based parkour group was created. Urban Freeflow has been the center of much criticism in the Parkour community for various reasons one being their focus on competition and rivalry. Parkour Generations is a parkour team who is “dedicated to teaching and displaying the discipline of parkour.” Parkour Generation has some of the members from Yamasaki in it as well as new traceurs who were trained by the founding members of the team.
Parkour can be found all around the world practiced by all kinds of people and all kinds of skill levels. Parkour.net is a worldwide parkour forum set up for traceurs to communicate with each other. Parkour.net features forums in five different languages, English, French, German, Spanish and Czech. There are also parkour teams from many different continents, the Tribe, in the U.S., Yamakasi, in France, and Lavida in Spain. Parkour is still a spreading sport and each country has its own variations. As more and more of the world becomes aware of parkour the number of traceurs will grow sending the future of parkour into the stratosphere.
American Parkour (APK) was one of the first American based parkour groups helping to spread the new sport to the west. APK is an informative website that consists of tutorials, forums, and videos to attract the future generation and advance the knowledge of the current parkour community in the U.S. APK also supports The Tribe (an American parkour team) and is a current source of factual informative information about parkour in the U.S.
Parkour today is still growing. As it spreads across countries into new states and towns more people are practicing the art. Three of the newest practitioners are from Portland, ME. They discovered parkour vie the web and an article about the one tracer in Maine. After training in Portland they traveled to Washington, DC to train with members of The Tribe, the American Parkour Team. As the skills of parkour are shared, new insights and abilities are developed bringing the collective aspect of parkour to new levels.
No comments:
Post a Comment