Is it a sport? Is it art? Local ‘urban ninja’ Hatta breaks down parkour for Jaclyn Tan

The midday sun casts its glow on Esplanade Drive as the usual traffic passes. A young man stands surveying the two-metre gap separating the two bridges; one wrong step and he would fall 30m into the murky currents of the Singapore River below. Taking a deep breath and one last glance to size up the space before him, the man bends his knees and springs gracefully across the void. 

His name is Hatta, and he’s not crazy. He’s one of 200-plus local parkour enthusiasts, also known as traceurs or ‘urban ninjas’ – a fitting description for the gravity-defying, Spider-Man-style stunts they perform. Consider it an extreme sport: how else to describe these people who leap from balconies to stairways, fly from pillar to pillar, and crawl up walls? 

But parkour is no newfangled activity. It has its roots in French military training in the early 1900s, when naval offi cer Georges Hébert was inspired by the physical agility of indigenous peoples on a visit to Africa and came to believe in its importance for survival during crises. He incorporated obstacle-course training into his teaching to spread this art of movement. In the late 1980s, David Belle, another Frenchman who served in the military and excelled in gymnastics, redefi ned parkour as an aesthetic, making fi lms to showcase his moves. After the Luc Besson-scripted cult flick Yamakasi – Les Samouraïs des Temps Modernes came out in 2001, an extreme sport was born.

It’s hard not to make analogies about parkour: it’s skateboarding without the boards; Jackie Chan’s disciples; young men who jump like monkeys. But according to Hatta, it’s more than a stunt. ‘It’s about getting from one place to another the most efficient way,’ Hatta explains. ‘People always think it’s [about] leaping from building to building, but it’s really more [like] freedom of movement in the concrete jungle; it’s a lifestyle.’ 

The 28-year-old became interested in parkour during his school days. ‘I saw Yamakasi, and I went home and looked up “parkour Singapore” on the internet,’ he says. From there, he found discussion forums and got involved with the local community, which has been growing ever since. ‘When I started mixing with them two years ago, there were only about 50 of us. Now there are over 200.

’Even in ‘fine’ Singapore, parkour is legal in public places, though police may frown on trespassing and vandalism (beware shoe marks on white surfaces). Just avoid being a public nuisance, and try not to scale HDB pipes – you never know if an auntie will mistake you for a burglar. 

Looking at Hatta’s lanky and muscular physique, it is easy to see how he executes his stunts with such swiftness. However, he insists that parkour can be practised by anyone, regardless of body type. ‘Skill and talent may help, but it’s not a prerequisite – it’s about technique,’ he says. ‘Different body types give different advantages, so each traceur has a unique set of abilities. For example, I could be really good at jumping long distances, but someone more stout can move in between gaps more easily than I can.’ The principle even applies across genders – while less than 5 per cent of the Singaporean traceur community are women, Hatta says they have advantages over men in parkour. ‘Girls may be less explosive, but they naturally have more technique than guys, [and] that makes up for their lack of strength and power. They are also more flexible and can be more graceful to watch.’

An insurance agent during the day, Hatta says parkour has made a huge impact on his life. ‘It really changes the way you look at the world. You look at one obstacle, a pole or a beam, and you think about how you can climb it. It’s how creative your mind can be. There are no limits; you make your movements as you go. It can even come in handy sometimes – like once, a squash ball was stuck on the second storey and I climbed up to get it while everyone else just gawked in awe.’ 

When we point out the irony of his day job and jokingly ask if he has an especially large insurance policy for himself, Hatta laughs and dismisses the sport’s image as a high-risk activity. ‘People associate injuries with parkour, but I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘A lot of people think we’re crazy, that we do dangerous things. But each move we make is calculated… we don’t take unnecessary risks. I’ve practised parkour for two years now, and so far I’ve only been injured once – I landed on my wrist while doing a mid-air flip. And that was because I was already physically tired, and I wasn’t confident, and that is never the right mindset to do something in parkour.’ 

For those itching to try out this sport, take the expert’s advice: ‘It shouldn’t be about showing off; it’s about having fun,’ he says. ‘You need an open mind; don’t limit yourself to the ways you can do something. There is also a lot of mental strength involved – that’s the difference between jumping a gap when you’re one metre over the ground, and jumping the gap when you’re 30 metres over the ground.’ 

To learn more about Singapore’s parkour community, go to www.le-parkour.sg.