Just a short one. I’m aiming to go back to making blog entries every day and practicing everyday as it was one of the intentions of the blog to make Parkour a way of life.
Caught the second half of the womens class this evening.
I can speed vault outdoors! :.):.)
The BEST thing about this is the revelation that it was so easy. I had speed vault on my list of ‘Tricky movements I must deal with’. I had envisaged a session of psyching up for it, emotional trauma, banged knees and only then eventual triumph. Not so!. Turns out the difference between a fluid and light step vault (which recently I have specifically worked on) and a speed vault is just lengthening your top leg a few centimeters. By aiming to contact the wall a tiny bit further than normal from your hand and by delaying this contact with the wall the tiniest bit you are already over the obstacle and your wall is behind you, done and dusted, a footnote in history, toast.
Did you hear that wall?! Your’re toast!...Speed vault, speed vault, speed vault, cha cha cha cha cha chacha!
Makes you think…what other things could be achieved with the softest, smallest little adjustment? :.)
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Movement is your birthright!!
Theme of the week is being self consciousness and public parkour. I’m currently doing the South Bank project which involves jumping up and down on one spot in front of an audience until we expire. (Catch us at the Clore Ballroom at The Royal Festival Hall from 6.30pm on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th, ). Part of the deal is to let go of worrying what you look like in order to properly give your energy and intent and therefore exhaust yourself. I guess this is the true essence of expression; when you give all of yourself and don’t hold back for fear of judgment. Under the banner of ‘art’ is certainly a far more protected context than in the everyday on the way to the shops kind of setting. Working and socializing in the dance world for a long while I have enjoyed being surrounded by people who favour ‘weird’ over ‘normal’ and it this way I have operated in a little bubble that has allowed me to think I am physically and socially confident, maybe even rebellious (e.g. singing “Why do birds suddenly appear..!”whilst dancing with a sweet potato in Sainsburys New Cross for a guerilla theatre project, or getting into the school showers fully dressed then undressing wet and dripping whilst walking through the college atrium, or many other similar activities that caused people to say “bloody dance students!!”:.)).
However my recent Parkourless days have highlighted the fallacy in this belief. Why have my days been absent of Parkour?. Am I busy? Ill? Injured? Not warm?. To be fair a little all of the above is true. However many times there has been a railing or a wall or something that has spoken to me and I haven’t answered back and climbed on as I was concerned that I would look silly in front of ‘them’….whoever ‘they’ are!. Joe Public, society, the majority, the crowd, the herd…..a mostly faceless bunch that influence my world too much.
Now, I have recently been quite vocal about my dislike of London. I can feel trapped and drained here, squidged onto tubes, taunted by constant adverts, trampled on by tourists, mugged daily by over-inflated prices and presided over by arc of grey that is consistent only in the bringing rain. Parkour has somewhat liberated from this but nevertheless on a bad day London doesn’t seem to leave you any space to be a human bean.:.(
Another thought regarding this sense of being free to play and express yourself came from watching some really young children in the playground while I waiting for my bus today. Between climbing up and through the railings, doing cartwheels, rolling down the hill, pretending to faint, balancing on one leg and kung fu fighting each other these younglings openly explored their bodies and environment is a variety of expressive, creative and sometimes competitive ways. They knew I was watching and smiling at them and even asked “do you speak?!” and that only emphasized more how strongly I felt a million years from who they were. We really are an entirely different species once we have been shoved through school and the other systems of our existence, we end up all wrong and then build monstrous cities to contain this wrongness. This is of course a worst case view. Many people live very happy and healthy lives here. But most inspiring to me now is the vision of a traceur who can transcend it all.
The SouthBank project is also about the rebellion of the jump, the desire to defy gravity, the provocation of not being still. We were asked by the choreographer Julie Nioche to think of this as our project in that she is providing the starting point that we continue to explore ourselves after the performance is over. Until now I wasn’t sure what this would mean to me but now perhaps the idea of the public jump will be my biggest challenge. In Parkour we speak of having the eyes of children but this can be not just for the movement opportunities you see but the judgement and expectation you don’t. The challenge of having this childlike quality and of finding ways to transcend the problems that take the spring from our step and prevent you from reaching out with both hands might well save me and help me find ‘my way’ in the truest sense of the word.
However my recent Parkourless days have highlighted the fallacy in this belief. Why have my days been absent of Parkour?. Am I busy? Ill? Injured? Not warm?. To be fair a little all of the above is true. However many times there has been a railing or a wall or something that has spoken to me and I haven’t answered back and climbed on as I was concerned that I would look silly in front of ‘them’….whoever ‘they’ are!. Joe Public, society, the majority, the crowd, the herd…..a mostly faceless bunch that influence my world too much.
Now, I have recently been quite vocal about my dislike of London. I can feel trapped and drained here, squidged onto tubes, taunted by constant adverts, trampled on by tourists, mugged daily by over-inflated prices and presided over by arc of grey that is consistent only in the bringing rain. Parkour has somewhat liberated from this but nevertheless on a bad day London doesn’t seem to leave you any space to be a human bean.:.(
Another thought regarding this sense of being free to play and express yourself came from watching some really young children in the playground while I waiting for my bus today. Between climbing up and through the railings, doing cartwheels, rolling down the hill, pretending to faint, balancing on one leg and kung fu fighting each other these younglings openly explored their bodies and environment is a variety of expressive, creative and sometimes competitive ways. They knew I was watching and smiling at them and even asked “do you speak?!” and that only emphasized more how strongly I felt a million years from who they were. We really are an entirely different species once we have been shoved through school and the other systems of our existence, we end up all wrong and then build monstrous cities to contain this wrongness. This is of course a worst case view. Many people live very happy and healthy lives here. But most inspiring to me now is the vision of a traceur who can transcend it all.
The SouthBank project is also about the rebellion of the jump, the desire to defy gravity, the provocation of not being still. We were asked by the choreographer Julie Nioche to think of this as our project in that she is providing the starting point that we continue to explore ourselves after the performance is over. Until now I wasn’t sure what this would mean to me but now perhaps the idea of the public jump will be my biggest challenge. In Parkour we speak of having the eyes of children but this can be not just for the movement opportunities you see but the judgement and expectation you don’t. The challenge of having this childlike quality and of finding ways to transcend the problems that take the spring from our step and prevent you from reaching out with both hands might well save me and help me find ‘my way’ in the truest sense of the word.
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