MEETINGS IN MOTION

a journey through Parkour

LATIMER ROAD STATION

One by one, we jumped over the fence from the playground and rolled onto the grass on the other side. We were all in dark clothes, with light foot wear, small bags on our backs; with only bottles in them. In front of me was Adam, behind was Graham. Before him, was Sebastien. We breathed the crisp October air into our lungs and ran in line, like a centipede, deeper into the dark, concrete urban jungle. The tall lamp posts cast lights over the maze of brick walls. Surrounding the walls were bushes and trees, like silent shadows in the background. Our formation changed as we moved along the paths, each finding our own way to overcome the obstacles; walls with rough textures, the narrow edges on the flower beds, and the slippery surface of the rubbish bin. The railings created for the pedestrian´s safety, became a test of balance and concentration. We moved over, under, and between; weaving ourselves in and out, like a thread, between the obstacles and the empty spaces.

Against the concrete, our bodies orchestrated an improvisation of rhythms; jumps and landings let out tic´s and tac´s; gliding down the slanted wall said ‘shhh’ ‘shhhh’ ‘shhhhh’, subtle like the slow brushes on cymbals. Leaves were crackling as we moved on the narrow edges of the beds of bushes and flowers. In-between were the sounds of silence; the moments when our feet were off the ground; a moment defying gravity.

We were on the threshold of being human; in a betwixt and between of human and animal. Our attentions were sharp, concentration crystalized as we tracked back to something long forgotten, something ancient and primal, but that would always be deeply ingrained in our DNA. Blood and bruises would become imprints on our bodies. We moved, as if we were hunting or being hunted, following invisible concrete trails. Our pace slowed down as we came out of Waynflete Square panting, and onto Bramley Road, crossing the road to Latimer Road Station, where it all had begun. We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways; back to our lives, only to meet again the same day and hour, the week after.

Photo: Caroline Urbancic. Group picture after a Wednesday session. From the left: Adam, Ivan, Ilakkiya, Sebastien and Graham

CONCRETE CONVERSATIONS

“Parkour was never invented by anyone, it’s always been there.” (Foucan, 2008)

The first time I met Sebastien Foucan was on a mild day in the middle of September 2014. Foucan is one of the French forebears of Guadeloupean origin and a pioneer of Parkour. He was the main character who brought Parkour into the mainstream U. K´s public eye with the documentary “Jump London” (Christie, 2003) showcasing Sebastien and a couple of other parkour practitioners. What caught the global public eye was the spectacular performance of Foucan as the villain, Mollaka, who appeared in the opening sequence of James Bond, Casino Royale (2006). The scene shows Mollaka (Foucan) being chased by Bond (Craig) through the streets of Madagascar. At one point in the scene, they end up climbing cranes, jumping from one crane to another, that would make one’s skin crawl.

Yet it was not the crane jumping villain Mollaka I was about to meet, but a humble master of movement, with vertigo. In 2013 I stumbled upon Foucan´s (2008) book, Freerunning. Find Your Way. The book is Sebastien´s philosophical reflection on movement and life, in which he emphasizes Parkour being a journey. Parkour/Freerunning was not about throwing oneself recklessly from building to building, hoping one would make it; but it was about knowing one’s capability and deliberately working step by step to master one´s body in relation to the environment.

Parkour, Freerunning or l´art du deplacement are used interchangeably when discussing the discipline. Some purists and “old schoolers” might argue that there is a clear distinction between the terms. However, when observing the movements, it would be hard to tell the difference. Whether it is called Parkour, Freerunning or l´art du deplacement, all have in them the basic movements that inform the practice; climbing, jumping, running, leaping, rolling, balancing, traversing, swinging and other creative movements. Parkour is commonly defined as the art of getting from point A-B in a creative way, using one´s body. It is a discipline and an art of expressing oneself in one’s environment, embracing the individual’s personal journey; physically and spiritually. Foucan (2008) stressed the importance of cultivating the right mentality and practice to find a way to overcome obstacles that were ahead of you. His approach was playful, giving importance to the “child play” and how we must “relearn” as we entered adulthood.

Sebastien and I were at the center of an urban residential area in West- London, surrounded by tall buildings. There were concrete pathways, grass spots with benches, a small playground, and flower and bush beds with brick borders. Sebastien pointed to the walls; they were everywhere. He commented on how they had great grip. “You don’t need a gym. Just step outside and look at the environment around us,” he said and waved his arms around, pleased with the abundance of walls. “When you practice Parkour, you see the world through a ‘a parkour vision’. It starts as a child play based on natural instincts of exploring the environment around you. But as a society, we are conditioned from our primary school to just sit down for hours and study. We become so conditioned; we become less spontaneous, and forget our natural instincts to explore and move. Our ancestors were better movers than us. We have a lot to learn from our past.”

For the hunter- gatherers’, the most important skill was freedom of movement. The nomadic way of life required them to adapt and move around in tune with the seasonal changes. In discussing “the original affluent societies” in Stone Age Economics, cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (2004; 1972) turns the tables around, reflecting on the notion of “wealth”, highlighting that the accumulation of material wealth (an attitude dominating the capitalist west; his emphasis) would be a burden for the nomadic hunter. It would prevent them from moving efficiently in the natural terrain. It was fundamental to be in tune with the rhythm of the natural environment, in order to hunt and gather. For the modern urban person, Parkour offered a medium through which we could translate our natural instincts to move into the urban environment.

Like an animal, Sebastien went down on all fours onto the concrete ground. He introduced the quadrupedal movement, one of the basic conditioning exercises in parkour which engaged your core, strengthened the joints, and improved the armlegs coordination. We did quadrupedal movements forwards, backwards, and sideways on the concrete pathway in silence. Even if I was new to the practice of Parkour, it felt strangely familiar being on the ground, getting the hands dirty.

“Alors! Let’s find a precision jump for you.” He had the same scouting expression on his face I had

seen earlier. We found two low walls that stood a couple of feet apart from each other. Sebastien and I went on top of one wall; lifting both his arms, he took off and jumped, landing lightly like a cat. A precision jump can be performed standing or running, but the most crucial part (to prevent injury) is a good landing; on the balls of your feet, bending the knees as you land, absorbing the impact. I did not jump. Registering my hesitation, he said: “Just imagine how effortlessly and quietly a cat lands”. Moving like a cat was obviously what we were striving for.

In the beginning, Parkour was for me a lot about imitation; imitating Sebastien and my fellow practitioners. I paid attention to the ways they vaulted, the placement of their hands and feet on the wall, the sound of their landings. I learned by observing. In writing about the acquisition of knowledge through bodily imitation, existential anthropologist, Michael Jackson (2013), draws from his fieldwork experience among the Kuranko in Sierra Leone. In the village he lived in he had to build fire to boil water for drinking and cleaning. At first, he disregarded this mundane activity, and was careless of how much wood he wasted. One time, by coincidence, he observed the way the women in the village built a fire: “their technique, which involved careful placement of the firestones, never using more than three lengths of split wood at one time, laying each piece carefully between the firestones, and gently pushing them into the fire as the ends burned away” (Jackson, 2013, p. 69). After observing how the women would make a fire, he started them: “it made me realize the close kinship between economy of effort and grace of movement”. Through observing and imitating, I too had gained knowledge of the body in relation to the environment.

One does not have to look too far back to our distant ancestors to be reminded of our natural way of moving. Sebastien often referred to children and animals to describe the spontaneous quality in their movements. While Parkour challenged the way I perceived and interacted with the environment, it also became a medium through which I rediscovered the possibilities it had silently offered us. The rediscovery threw me back to the time me and my brother would always sprint, jump, roll, climb over the stone walls of the cemetery; always in movement; preoccupied with innocent child play, shaking out our restlessness. The muscle memories brought back the sensations of freedom of movement, the urge to explore, and keep moving. When and why do we lose these qualities from childhood?

Photo: Caroline Ubancic. Me performing a wall run (passe muraille) under the guidance of Sebastien. London, UK.

BROKEN JUMPS

There is a phrase in Parkour, “breaking a jump”. It describes the process in which a parkour practitioner at some point in his practice comes across a jump which he has never done, and is most likely afraid of doing. Practitioners often refer to such a jump that one is “called” to do. A fundamental element in the practice is working with and overcoming your fear. The practitioner stands before the obstacle he has to overcome. A jump that is to be broken is highly personal, and the process of overcoming it often leads to personal growth and gain.

For some time, Adam had looked at a jump that had “called” to him. It was from a platform surrounded by a low wall. On the platform stood two large vertical green pipes. The aim was to cat pass (take off from the ground and push with your hands over

the wall) over the low wall and onto the black pipe that was attached to the wall on the other side. Between the platform and the wall was the pedestrian pathway. Adam looked at the jump, took note of the distance, and visualized the movement as he walked the run up. He gestured the motions with the hands and assessed the surface of the wall: getting familiar with its texture against his skin. As a fellow practitioner and parkour companion, you do all you can to support him, to be there for him, and to offer advice and encouraging words. However, you also make sure to know when to be quiet and let him have the conversation with fear alone; a paradox of parkour is that it is a discipline of interdependence. As much as one is together in practice and play, when the jump calls; it is between you and it. It made me think that it is a great metaphor for life; as Michael Jackson said, “(…) humanity is at once shared and singular (…), human beings seek individuation and autonomy as much as they seek union and connection with others.” (Jackson, 2013, p. 6)

Then opened the window of opportunity, a silence when the mind was clear of all noises and thoughts. He went running between the two green pipes, towards the wall, going into a cat-like posture as he pushed himself over it and extended his body. For a moment he flew in the air like a bird, before he approached the wall with both feet “tac!” and caught firmly onto the pipeline. Adam turned his body around and leaped back to the wall he had taken off from and stepped onto the platform. He took to his knees and breathed and laughed, with the adrenalin and the joy that had come with overcoming the fear. In Parkour “Breaking jumps” is a disruption of “habitus”, a popular term that was coined by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1967). Habitus is the bodily patterns in one´s everyday mundane life, that are mostly unconscious. The disruption of these habitual patterns opens up possibilities for change in behavior. The process of ´breaking the jump´, offers possibilities to break away from not only the habitual bodily patterns of everyday life, but as well, our habitual thought patterns, paving new pathways of possibilities in our minds. Parkour as a whole offers the spontaneous quality in our everyday mundane life.

MEETINGS IN MOTION

The quality of spontaneity has been concerned by artists and practitioners across creative practices and crafts. In a conversation with his brother, the great jazz pianist and musician, Bill Evans reflected on jazz being a creative process that has the quality of spontaneity. Evans concerned himself with students who came to him for advice, noting that they “tend to approximate the product” and were too preoccupied with style from the be-

Photo: Me. Adam in the process of visualizing the jump. London, UK

ginning. In other words, they wanted to take the shortcuts to jazz. He stressed the importance of mastering the fundamentals, and “attacking it in a realistic way, step by step and enjoy the process.” Jazz, for Evans, was in a way a resurrection of the creative process as opposed to composing. Although people would come to associate jazz as a stylistic form of music, for Evans, it was a “process of making music”; in the here and now, allowing improvisation and spontaneity (Cavrell, 1966).

This somehow rang true in the parkour practice. It is fundamental to learn and repeat the basic steps of parkour movements until we have a good grip on them. We can then go on to refine the quality of each movement, simultaneously getting familiar with the various textures, shapes, and qualities of objects. The embodied knowledge of each movement, would enable one to put them together, allowing space for an improvisational conversation or dance with the environment; listening to the rhythm of the movements, being sensitive to the timing of the spaces in-between; and all together, they would make up the flow of it as a whole.

It starts on the ground. Before we can even think of the concept of “parkour”, it starts from child play, and then continues to the deliberate practice of awareness and attentiveness to oneself, to others and the environment that we inhabit together. The practice offers a dynamic and intimate relationship that contests our sense of belonging; offering concrete platforms for urban dwelling. It is a journey of moving with our bodies and our minds, with others in our environment, as well as a resurrection of natural human movement. It is a way to keep our minds and body in motion in the meeting with the obstacles in our environment and in our lives.

Illustrasjon: Oddbjørn Rovde