Parkour coach Nigel Morris leads junior traceurs Theo Wester, Mike Russell, Mary Russell, and William Brancato through a training regimen on a recent weekend at MAC.
PARKOUR KEEPS PERCOLATING New Coach Grows Program by Leaps & Bounds By Jake Ten Pas Photos by Brandon Davis
G
eorges Hebert, David and Raymond Belle, John Ciampa, and Sébastien Foucan aren’t exactly household names. James Bond, on the other hand, should ring bells. When it comes to the athletic artform of parkour, however, perhaps no trio is quite so well-known as Michael Scott, Dwight Schrute, and Andy Bernard. One might say that they scream, “Parkour!” Such statements could induce conniption fits in self-serious practitioners of the actual sport.
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MAC Parkour Instructor Nigel Morris lets them roll off his back like his students off a stack of mats in the Gymnastics Arena. He knows that parkour is simply the art, or sport, of going from point A to point B in the safest, smoothest, most efficient way possible. In other words, the exact opposite of the spastic flops and half-somersaults seen on The Office. “That’s one of my favorite references!” he says, a smile breaking across his unflappable face. “They were just rolling around, doing the most horrible movement any human being
could put their body through and yelling ‘Parkour!’ I think that’s when a lot of younger people started getting into it.” Casino Royale, the Bond movie that put parkour squarely in the sights — and sites — of the movie-going public, had come out in 2006, three years before the 2009 The Office “cold open” set the web spinning all over again. “From around 2007 to 2013, there started to be a lot more forums on the internet. People were talking about themselves training, a lot of them inspired by this guy David Belle, who had been organizing meetups on the outskirts of Paris and posting videos of himself for years.” As interest in the sport grew, so did opportunities to capitalize on the trend, with Foucan — the free-runner chased by Bond through construction sites in Madagascar — touring with Madonna, and David Belle going Hollywood in the American remake of his District 13 films, Brick Mansions. Despite some pushback against the monetization of the sport from those who’d been drawn to it by loose, community-minded jams, or athletic-feat-focused gatherings, many ultimately embraced the growing notoriety and the global interest it spawned.
