Le Parkour, ou l'Art Du Déplacement, consiste à utiliser les obstacles rencontrés sur son chemin, pour effectuer des sauts ou acrobaties. Le tout, en alliant vitesse, fluidité, esthétique et originalité.
from http://membres.lycos.fr/parkourll/
BBC1 and BBC2, being publicly funded, don't carry advertising. Occasionally ads for the channels themselves are run, to cover gaps in scheduling. One such ad currently being screened on BBC2 stars David Belle, a 28-yr-old athlete from Paris and creator of a new extreme sport which involves crossing the city 'using encountered obstacles as your highway', via daring and highly dangerous acrobatic feats such as swinging down fire escapes, climbing backwards up high walls and leaping across rooftops. The ad, shot in Paris, starts with a shirtless (and deliciously torsoed) Belle performing a controlled, graceful handstand on a railing high above the city, and is edited to give an elegant, almost balletic feel to his amazing leaps and spins across the tops of buildings as he makes his way home to watch TV.
In his fourteen years of developing the sport Belle has trained many teams of parkours, ('parkour' being French for 'obstacle course') one of which is featured in Ariel Zeitoun's film Yamakasi (written by Luc Besson). Many of the members of these teams are young, poor, first or second-generation immigrant street kids from the Paris projects where le parkour has become a growing craze. They train progressively, attempting harder and harder acrobatic feats each time. Belle, the son of a fireman nicknamed Kamikaze for his fearlessness, is still the acknowledged king of les parkours. He can get down the outside of a 4-storey building in less than 15 seconds.
Read the BBC article here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1939867.stm