Young Syrian parkour players perform a coordinated jump in the largely-damaged part of Aleppo city, northern Syria, on June 8, 2018. With their breathtaking flips and jumping stunts, a group of young Syrians are bringing life back to the destroyed parts of Aleppo city with their electrifying Parkour performance. (Xinhua/Ammar Safarjalani)
by Hummam Sheikh Ali
ALEPPO, Syria, June 16 (Xinhua) -- With their breathtaking flips and jumping stunts, a group of young Syrians are bringing life back to the destroyed parts of Aleppo city with their electrifying Parkour performance.
Inspired by online videos, seven young Syrian men formed in 2014 the Foxes Team, which mesmerized Aleppo residents with their performance of Parkour, the sport of moving rapidly from one point to another through a complex environment without assistive equipment. The performers have to clear varied obstacles by running, jumping, climbing, swinging, vaulting, rolling, and crawling.
The group started the Parkour performance with a desire to change their lives for better and release the local residents' stress, by turning the negative impact of the war and rage into something positive.
And, more importantly, the eye-catching performance can bring about excitement and joy to the audiences.
This sport, which originated from France, is not widely popular in Syria. But the group of young men, aged between 16 and 21, found out that the ruins of their homes and neighborhoods in Aleppo, where their old memories are buried under the rubble, provided an ideal stage for their performance.
Indeed, their performance helped revive the old sweet memories of their homes and neighborhoods in childhood.
"All of our memories are under the rubble of the homes and stones here in front of us, and most of our team members are the residents in these areas," Omar Kosheh, the coach of the Foxes Team, told Xinhua.
"So when they come here, they revive their dreams and memories and try to release the negative energy, which was generated by the long war in Syria," he said.
Kosheh used to be a coach of kickboxing, kung fu and gymnastics, and most of his current team members received training from him. Later on, they started developing their skills and decided to master the Parkour stunts "to do something beautiful."
In the Bab Antakia area in old Aleppo, those young men were running, jumping and climbing, often slamming the walls with the palms of bare hands, before doing high flips in the air. They ran through the damaged buildings in search of any falling rock they could jump on to do the back and front flips.
They could locate accurately almost every rock they landed on, so they could run while doing coordinated jumps.
Some of their stunts were so breathtaking that it was hard to watch for the weak-hearted, especially when they climbed onto the narrow edge of a high wall before jumping off to land on the rocks on the ground. Any slight mistake could cost them their lives.
Another stunt of their performances was jumping in and out of the ground floor of the abandoned apartments: they jumped into the house with a front flip through the door and out with a high back flip out of the window.
The local residents were really stunned by the young men's dangerous stunts. An old onlooker was so shocked by watching the flips that he closed his eyes while saying the prayers "May Allah protect you!"
Accidents did happen to the team, as some of them were injured during training and performing because they don't have a safe gym or protective gears.
The group of young men have become very famous in Aleppo and some other Syrian cities now, as they are considered the pioneers in the Parkour performance in Syria.
While enjoying the joy and excitement they bring to the local residents in the war-torn country, these brave young men also hope that they could one day perform in international competitions, such as the Red Bull Art of Motion.
They said that, although they can rehearse and play Parkour everywhere, they like most to perform in old Aleppo in order to deliver a message.
"We can work out and practice technically everywhere, but mostly we exercise in old Aleppo, as through the jumps and flips in the destroyed places, we send a message that life is coming back to these areas," Yesir Mardini, a member of the team, told Xinhua.
