Free Running Show at E4 Udderbelly

Parkour or free running? To the experts, they are different things. To the rest of us, they come under the blanket heading of ‘superhuman gravity-defying feats of acrobatic ability performed by crazy individuals who like to run.’

Actually, the difference is important. Parkour is, as far as my layman’s understanding goes (and very lay it is indeed, as someone who can’t run more than about 500m without feeling as though her lungs are imploding), the most efficient and swift way of getting from Point A to Point B, regardless of obstacles in the way. Free running is a little less grimly practical than that: it affords some importance to the aesthetics of the thing, presumably on the reasoning that if you’re going to do some of the most gruelling, skillful and entire-body-workout exercise then you might as well a) look as cool as possible while doing it and b) give people more than a split second to admire you as you burn past.

Free Running is the topic in question here today; namely the free running of the most prevalent UK group of free runners: 3RUN. Not content with breaking world records galore, setting up a UK free running community and even putting free tutorial videos online instructing those interested in the sport in how to do it, they have gone one further and put together a free running show, which is currently on at the E4 Udderbelly Festival at the Southbank Centre.

This is the first time that free running has been put into a stage show, and the result is explosive. The team run, jump and flip their way about the stage with the help of seemingly random equipment, which is at the heart of free running: use whatever’s in your way as your springboard.  The speed, momentum, smoothness of skill and power on display in free running is fantastic to watch – rather than being concerned with the perfection of form as in gymnastics, the energy and economy of movement is exhilarating and makes you want to give it a go.

The show finishes on 17 July 2011, so you’d better get your skates on if you’re interested in seeing the staged spectacle of free running. They’re on every night except Mondays, with a matinee performance on Saturdays and Sundays. They not quite sold out yet, but tickets are going fast, so get cracking. And hey, if you find yourself inspired by the show enough to get your trainers on and go for a run, leaping walls along the way, all the better.

Catch 3Run’s free running show at:

Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
Waterloo
SE1 8XX

Image by 3Run