Archive for June 2015

Home Archive for June 2015

Parkour and Freerunning spread from France through Europe, to the USA and Russia to the whole world. This development was massively influenced by countless media reports and scenes in world-famous movies, such as Banlieue 13 (USA title: District B13) or the James Bond film Casino Royale, in which Sébastien Foucan appears as a freerunner in the opening scene.
Another milestone for the worldwide appreciation of the movement forms was the use of Parkour and Freerunning scenes by Madonna in two of her music videos (“Hung up” and “Jump”).
Rapid global diffusion and development were aided by Internet video portals like YouTube, which provided a platform for the presentation of Parkour and Freerunning videos and enabled a rapid international exchange of experiences. Meanwhile, in other countries, numerous groups of young people were springing up, with the aim of following in the footsteps of their French heroes.
Where there is demand, there will be supply. Due to the increasing demand for clarification and training guidance, the first teams and agents at local and national levels were formed offering training facilities and workshops. Growing international interest led to the first events and competitions.
Although neither David Belle nor Sébastien Foucan had intended Parkour and Freerunning to be competitive sports, there are now a few competitions for these target groups. The first competition of this type was the Parcouring World Championships on July 9-10, 2007 in Munich, Germany.
The competition consisted of a timed obstacle course that was promoted with Parkour images. At that time, the competition sparked a lively debate over whether Parkour competitions were going in the right direction. From this difference of opinions at that time, an interest group sprang up, which objected to Parkour in connection with competitions (“Pro Parkour, against competition”).
Although Sébastien Foucan also said that he was against competitive Freerunning, it is also developing in a different direction. On October 6, 2007, Red Bull organized the first Freerunning/ Freestyle Moves Contest, called “Art of Motion,” in Vienna, to which an international selection of freerunners was invited in order to establish the best freerunners by means of a one-minute “show run.”
The Parcouring World Championships were likewise expanded to include a style contest for the Freerunning community in 2008. A third international competition was organized by Urban Free Flow in London in September 2008, called the Barclaycard World Freerun Championships. All three competitions were also held in 2009.
Since 2009, there has been the completion of an open air Parkour and Freerunning Park in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the first indoor training hall for Parkour and Freerunning in Russia (St. Petersburg) and in Germany (Cologne – Move Artistic Dome). Others are currently under construction. The scene is developing rapidly and diversely, and it is exciting to see which direction it will take.

In 2001, Sébastien Foucan formulated his own philosophy with the term Freerunning (“follow your way”). In some cases, this discipline was also written as Free Running. The first media references to the term Freerunning include the English documentaries Jump London (2003) and Jump Britain (2005). These documentaries, which are also considered to be important testimonials of the Parkour movement, were a milestone for the emerging Parkour and Freerunning movement in England. Inspired by the documentaries, the first English groups formed in the footsteps of Sébastien Foucan.
There is debate over whether Foucan’s term Freerunning was considered the universal term for the movement form Parkour and for l’art du déplacement, in order to make it more accessible to an English-speaking public, or whether Foucan even then was aiming for a separate development of the
movement form of Freerunning. This is where opinions in Germany and England differ.
Regardless, Sébastien Foucan is considered to be the founder of the movement discipline of Freerunning. However, author Dan Edwardes attributes the idea for the term “Freerunning” not to Foucan but to Guillaume Pelletier, who had collaborated with Foucan on the Channel 4 documentary Jump London. Furthermore, the existence of the term dates from 2003).
At this time, terminological chaos reigned. The relatively young movement forms had now spread beyond the borders of France and a varied and colorful scene had sprung up, which along with efficient escape techniques also practiced creative and acrobatic movements in urban terrain. The definition of Parkour as efficient movement by David Belle excluded acrobatic movements. Sébastien Foucan’s Philosophy of Freerunning on the other hand offered a much more open interpretation with regard to which movements belonged to Freerunning and which did not.
This led to creative and acrobatic movements in urban settings being termed Freerunning. Whether or not it was Foucan’s goal right from the start to differentiate between Parkour and Freerunning is open to question. The movements that Foucan and Belle presented for their different movement philosophies are not actually that different from each other and make their common origins very clear. Since then, Freerunning has been considered a separate discipline.

David Belle, son of Raymond Belle, was born on April 29, 1973 in Fécamp, France. He was raised by his maternal grandfather. The men in his family had served in the Paris Fire Brigade for generations, and he was constantly reminded of his father’s extraordinary physical abilities and heroic fire-fighting deeds.
As a child, David Belle practiced gymnastics and track and field, but he always preferred to train in the open air and the woods. For him, the movements had to have an element of “usefulness” just as his father had told and explained to him. As a child, he imagined situations in which he had to put his courage and strength to the test.
His passions were overcoming obstacles, always moving forward and not letting anything get in his way. The constant running, jumping, climbing and balancing formed the foundation for his physical abilities. The physical challenges that he set himself during his imaginary stories formed the foundation for his powerful concentration.
At the age of 15, Belle relocated with his family to Lisses, near Evry, about 35 miles from Paris. There, he transferred the techniques he had learned in the forests of Normandy to the urban environment and architecture. His active, public example sparked the interest of other young people around him (Hess & Hess, 2007 – Parkour Association Germany; Belle, J-F – Homepage of David Belle: http://kyzr.free.fr.davidbelle/).
David Belle and Sébastien Foucan met at this time. What started off as playful games of chase among young people developed, during the years that followed, into a real sporting challenge: escape techniques over obstacles. The movement forms inspired by the urban landscape were further developed by this small group of youngsters, who constantly increased heights and distances, each in his way bringing something new to the movement forms.
The art of displacement, or l’art du déplacement therefore originated from a kids’ game, which was
already given the name (le) parcours in 1989 (Foucan, 2008). The urban, athletic movement forms first gained wide public attention thanks to a video of Belle that his brother Jean-François Belle showed to the French TV show Stade2 in May 1997 (Belle J-F – Homepage of David Belle: http://kyrz.free.fr/davidbelle). This led to the first media reports about David Belle and his friends. In the same year, the group Yamakasi was formed by the top practitioners.

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