Le Parkour Wellington
Posted by stephen clover on Thursday, 01 Nov 2007
Ever been wandering around town and seen a group of youngsters behaving like a bunch of naughty monkeys? Whaddya know.. they're probably doing parkour.
Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK) or or "free-running" or l'art du déplacement ("the art of displacement") is an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body.
Founded by David Belle in France, parkour focuses on practicing efficient movements to develop your body and mind to be able to overcome obstacles in an emergency. It is also practiced by many as a form of entertainment or as a pastime.
As I hinted above, there's a thriving parkour scene in Wellington; especially in and around the urban/recreational areas of the waterfront and Civic Square.
Interested? There's more after the jump..
Here's a couple of clips of some pretty shit-hot local practitioners:
This is what happens when parkour goes wrong:
Luckily our guys are a bit more skillful than this lot of unfortunates:
Or this lot:
.. and so on and so on. There's much more where that came from (Youtube, of course).
And if you're keen to try it out, perhaps you could keep an eye on Meetups for parkour in Wellington.
"There's more after the jump.."
Ah, I see what you did there :-)
Some of those wipe-outs? Ouch.
the man.. is there a large parkour community in wellington? in 14, and wanting to learn. thx
Note that one (if not more) of those clips is of David Belle himself, and what you didn't see above was him getting up and walking away perfectly fine.
Sup, this is Chad from le Parkour Aotearoa (it names me in the vid, but I'm the one in shorts, singlet). There is a fairly good core of guys in the Welly scene now and we meet every sunday around 3pm either in Civic square or by the lagoon, and anyone is welcome to come watch or play or join in, whatever. We're all about trying to build a good rep for PK in NZ and the more people that get into and learn about it the better. Also been shooting a whole lot more footage last few weeks so keep an eye on http://www.youtube.com/user/Parapraxis30 and heres the latest vid so far aswell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Yur6bjaYQ
Peace out and hope to see some of you cats out n about
Heya, I'm a film student at South Seas Film School up in Akld and am wanting to make a short film Documentry on Parkour in NZ for my end of yeaar project. Do you know anyone up n auck I could meet up with?
In my week of shooting the film I can travel around nz, but need some ground work done up in auck b4 I head off anywhere else to shoot.
Email me at catmacky@hotmail.com
Thanks for the help
Peace and keep it up
Hey There
I am from a team of 12 Free-Runners who train in Auckland City every saturday from 10:30am - 4:00pm, so we'd be more than happy to help you out with you doco.
Here's our youtube link:
www.youtube.com/AucklandFreeRunner
Here's my email address :)
gemstonepictures@hotmail.com
Cheers,
Ethan
yo man i am 14 i want to come train with you guys but can i email me at cow.go@hotmail.com PLzz ty
hey, my names kyle, im 15 and i live in tauranga in the bay of plenty, i am a huge fan of free-running, i can run up a few 1st story walls on to roofs, jump large distances, climb polls, i am also extremely flexible, and i am just over 6 ft.
Do you know of any parkour groups in the bay of plenty where i could go with a group and learn more stunts and stratagies?
cheers
Some of those bails.. ouch..
but then again iv had my fair share.. so have my mates :P
but yeah. we tring to get pk meets in chch.. doesnt seem to be a big thing down there.. tho hoping to change tht :)
Wow, that's Wellington Library etc,
I have seen people doing this about town, and couldn't believe I actually saw groups practicing across from the police station etc.
Do you guys mix in gym work too? Like gymnastics and flexibility etc. I can see you'd have to be pretty fit at the least.
I s'pose I could get in touch through Vic Uni or something?
Hey I'm from the Wellington parkour community, along with Chad who commented up above a few months ago. This article is from 07, but people are still finding this right?
So if anyone's interested in more about parkour (and the related discipline of free running) the NZ website is at www.nzparkour.com. You can contact us Wellington guys through there :)
i wanna do parkour but i can't find a place in wellington that does parkour for 12 year old girls
HELP ME!!
Jemma: get in touch with the Wellington Circus Trust, and ask them to hook you up with Tiago Miranda (that's him in the first clip). http://www.circus.org.nz/about/contact-us/
Hey guys,
Let me just say that what you do is awesome.
Im wanting to learn it too Im 18 but i feel too old as most of your comments are from 14/15 year olds. haha
DO you know anyone who i could run with in Wellington? I just moved here and am a student. You can email me at aka-ray@hotmail.com
Thanks, Cant wait to start.
yea im in the same boat as braydon,im 17 nd jst been based at trentham military camp 4 the next year nd a half and wanna get into parkour, ne1 that can help with that,email me grimfire_142@hotmail.com
cheers
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