“Our aim is tO Take our arT to the WOrld and make people Unders ta nd what it is to move.”

  David Belle

The sport of parkour was developed in Lisses, France, a suburb of Paris. Who is usually considered to be it's founder?

David Belle. Belle developed the movements of parkour with a group of friends in the 1980s. Foucan, Perriere, and Diouf were other members of this group, which later became known as the "Yamakasi"...

 Turning a city into an obstacle course

When I began studying i almost 10 years ago, one of my reasons for doing so was a desire to learn how to move more gracefully and meaningfully. I thought (correctly, as it turned out) that t’ai chi would be a safe, interesting, and enjoyable way to learn what it feels like to move intentionally and become more aware of my posture, balance, and physical interactions with my environment.                                     

When I first read about a sport (or art or activity) calledparkour, the philosophy behind it sounded very similar: an emphasis on fluid, elegant, graceful motions. But in practice, parkour is about as different from t’ai chi as I can imagine. It’s sometimes considered an “extreme” sport; as its participants dash around a city, they may vault over fences, run up walls, and even jump from rooftop to rooftop. So you won’t see senior citizens doing it in the park on Sunday mornings, but if you do witness it, you may think you’re watching a stunt person on a movie set.