Faculty researcher explores parkour training practices and how they could be applied to the broader field of performer training
Parkour training practices and how they can be applied to the broader field of performance training
A researcher from the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures has explored the training practices of a popular parkour team and considered how they could be applied to the broader field of performer training.
Parkour – also known as ‘free running’ – is a sport that involves moving through obstacles in a natural or man-made environment using only your body.
In “Concrete experience: Parkour as a culture of agential learning” Dr Campbell Edinborough (Associate Professor in Creative Practice in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries) analyses the training practices of the popular British parkour team Storror. It considers their approach to movement training and video documentation, and what the fields of physical education and performer training can learn from the growing online video archive of Parkour training.
Dr Edinborough argues that Parkour training establishes models of experimentation and innovation that are decentralised and rooted in the agency and curiosity of the practitioner. Practitioners use video sharing to spread innovations in practice and technique, establishing a training culture that promotes agential learning and experimentation.
He concludes by considering how culture and practices from Parkour might inform the broader field of performer training – articulating strategies for encouraging student agency in learning.
Dr Campbell Edinborough says:
“The lack of governing bodies, looseness of affiliation and relative ease of access to participation establish a porousness to Parkour that facilitates knowledge sharing across diasporic communities. By contrast, the majority of performer training happens in institutions that are required to provide an exclusive or unique offer to students (or clients) and differentiate themselves from competitors. Exclusivity is often connected to an authenticable connection to lineage or access to expertise validated through a governing body.
“While it is far beyond the scope of this article to question whether higher education institutions would benefit from being structured in different ways, the flexibility and porousness of Parkour’s global networks serves as an example for the benefits of working in more open, loose and responsive ways. Much of Parkour’s innovation comes through connecting rigorous, personal practice to the chaotic influence and inspiration of global, viral sharing. It’s worth asking what that might look like in the context of formal performing arts training. It’s also worth imagining how such a loosening of curricula might reshape and reinvigorate the performing arts.”
The article was published in the journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training.
