Online Travel Vietnam: Parkour, the French street art that involves moving around or over obstacles at speed, has become popular in Vietnam and is threatening the hegemony of graffiti and break dance as the quintessential street art.
Founded in 1997 by actor David Belle based upon his military, athletic, and martial arts training, parkour requires practitioners to vault, roll, run, climb, crawl, or jump.
Practitioners are called traceurs and there are dozens of groups with hundreds of members in Vietnam.
Tony, a Ho Chi Minh City traceur, said the art had first come to Hanoi around five years ago and been brought to HCMC by a group named Mario which remained the largest in Vietnam.
Initially members themselves found information about the art and share it since there were no classes.
Nguyen Hung Anh, a former member of Mario, said at its peak there had been 150 members, but the group had later split into smaller groups.
Unlike other street arts like graffiti that require expensive equipment, parkour seems to be an ideal sport for Vietnamese youngsters since it requires just comfortable athletic shoes, good physical health, and mental stability.
It can also be practiced anywhere.
Since it is easy to injure oneself, practitioners have to carefully undergo both physical and skills training.
Experienced traceurs do not prefer to take parkour to the streets due to the Vietnam's dense traffic.
""During practice, you face danger all the time, so the most important thing is safety," Nguyen Manh linh, a senior traceur, said.
One of the most outstanding traceurs in HCMC, Ngoc Chien, who had two years' training in India, said every move had to be considered carefully to avoid injuries."You can take risks, but remember you have only one life to live."
Below is a video by Marico Crew - the largest Parkour group in Vietnam:
Source: SGTT
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