I’m interested in working with groups and performers who are looking for parkour movements and abilities as part of a show.
I have previously worked on productions of West Side Story and Treasure Island, working with the director and fight choreographers to integrate parkour into the movement of the whole performance. This has included coaching the whole cast, groups in a scene and working 1:1 with actors on their movements and character.
I have a lot of experience in working with beginners to parkour just as much as able movers. In my coaching, I have lots of experience working with people who are less physically able or less confident in their movement. I’m patient and sensitive, meeting people where they are at both physically and emotionally to see how we can improve their movement abilities.
Parkour is about a certain way of moving and thinking about the environment which, not about turning everybody into an elite athlete – most characters are not elite athletes either!
In Treasure Island, the focus was more on individual characters who had to climb around the ‘ship’, swing and jump down from towers, and ramsack a pub. I also worked with actors on death scenes and falls, including a ‘dead’ body falling off a table and another tumbling down a tree, as well as working with the ‘savage’ Ben Gunn to create a more animal-like character jumping and moving on all fours more than walking.
In West Side Story, I worked with the whole cast to integrate parkour movement into the play, ensuring that as well as parkour sections and parkour as part of fight scenes, the whole performance had everybody was climbing, vaulting and swinging through the scaffolding-based set as part of all of the stage movements.
Contact me at parkour@alexmay.co.uk.