The idea is to move through the environment in a way that is as fluid, aestheticaly pleasing and original as possible. Its proponents, called traceurs, run, drop from heights, vault, flip and climb their way around obstacles trying to chain a group of these individual elements into a stylish whole.
Its founders including David Belle and Sebastien Foucan have built up their skills over the last ten or more years so that they are capable of cat-like agility and awesome physical feats. David Belle came to the public fore when he starred in a short film for the BBC called "Rush Hour" where, among many other tricks he leaps from a fourth storey building to land on roof two storeys below. Many people who saw the frenchman's skills on television were shocked to later find out that absolutly no special effects were employed to make the film and that the seemingly death-defying leaps, climbs and drops were all performed for real without wires or safety nets. Furthering the sport in the mainstream, Luc Besson made a film called Yamakasi, named after the first clan of traceurs which featured a group of young thieves who use their parkour skills to evade capture however Belle and some of his associates were unhappy with their portrayal as criminals and refused to endorse the project.
Most fans of the sport enjoy its current 'underground' nature and seek to avoid the commercialisation that has consumed sports like skateboarding and inline skating in recent years. In spite of this the sport continues to grow with traceurs and clans springing up in France, the UK and the USA among many other places worldwide.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump