Hawaii Parkour
Hawaii Parkour is an educational fitness organization, dedicated to sharing the healthy movement and risk-assement strategies that Parkour training can provide.
HIPK Supports a Global Black Lives Matter Movement
Darryl Stingley aka Wavy of the parkour crew Tha Legendary Sqvadron released this extraordinary piece of art and movement in March of this year, and it deserves our attention and appreciation. The videoʻs description:
Barriers in our path… Immense constructs meant to keep us enslaved, not only in body, but also in mind. Systematic structures designed to make us feel as though we will never escape them. Many have tried to climb these walls built to trap us, and many have fallen… Through this adversity, our people have grown strong and wise, and many of our people have ascended to heights once unimaginable. Even after so much progress, we have still witnessed our heroes fall… Taken from us, almost as if to tell us that we are meant to stay down… Yet here, despite the tragedies we’ve suffered, heroes still rise to the occasion… and they’re reaching for greater heights than have ever been accomplished before. This is the story of ascendance, rising from the ashes to direct flight, out of the mud and into the sunlight… This is the story of TRIALS MORALES!
Wavyʻs movement style epitomizes an aspect of the foundations of parkour that prioritizes the efficiency and power that is necessary in emergency situations. REACH! ESCAPE! These are some of the tenets of parkour that evolved from the harsh urban streets of Paris where social inequity, crime and punishment, and systematic oppression could have stolen the futures of the founders of lʻArt Du Deplacement, the foundations of parkour today.
Dedication, perseverance, and assuredness in oneself are part and whole of the traditional parkour practice. Of course, there is no rule that every parkour practitioner must incorporate this kind of intense style of training – Parkour will always be a very personal creative movement expression of the individual. But having tough training experiences, managing our fear with risk and imagining ourselves in emergency situations can help provide invaluable responses in times of sudden crisis.
Some practitioners, like Seattleʻs Brandee Laird, are encouraging the practice of these useful crisis-response training scenarios in order to build a strong community of citizens who do not need to rely on outdated systems of social control in order to address emergency situations. The discussion around police brutality and organized corruption within authoritarian systems is a necessary one to have, and the answers are not easily found. But if we can take charge of our response to emergency situations, if we can rely on ourselves and our community to protect one another, then the prevalence of unnecessary and senseless deaths may very well decrease.
Please follow and support local BIPOC (Black – Indigenous – People of Color) artists and organizations that are helping to strengthen their communities in these violent times. And in your support of your local police institutions, make sure they are held accountable for their misconduct. We may all be safer if we can disarm those who would abuse their powers, given to them by the people they are meant to serve and protect.
Black Lives Matter.
~Alana
Hawaii Parkour 