As you might know, we have been away in Romania running the first ever shibari workshop up in the Transylvania mountains at Bran in the shadow of the castle that inspired the Dracula story. It was a real privilege for us to be so instrumental at this early stage of the art there.
The organisers rented a huge chalet walking distance from Bran with views of the mountains. We lacked for nothing for which Nina and I would like to extend our thanks to all concerned, especially Iron Maiden and Ciprian. A brick built BBQ lovingly tended by our nomadic Frenchman, Savalski; an outdoor suspension frame hastily improvised from the frame of a child’s double swing…and even a club room with PA and pool table but that’s another story. Let’s just say that Savalski and Nina were…erh, right on cue putting a certain young lady in a very compromising position on the pool table and I have photos of Nina taking a rather easy pot at the pink after deciding the brown to be a little too tricky.
The atmosphere was buzzing as it was only the third BDSM meet up in the country and the biggest by far. I’m sure participants will tell you that I got a little school-masterish as sometimes students would be overcome with excitement of catching up with fellow kinksters and get somewhat distracted. Anyway, judging by the feedback and the blissed-out expressions at a certain point on Sunday afternoon, I think I achieved my mission of converting them from the heretical belief that shibari is all about knots to the path of connection and communication. Meanwhile, Nina helped sharpen up their suspension skills and gote engineering. All in all, some very solid foundations have been laid and a few more rope addicts created.
It will be interesting where things go from here. There is undoubtedly a lot of raw talent and a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. It reminds me of our first experiences of Russian rigging when almost everyone was self-taught with little formal influence. The situation, as you’ll hear in a bit, has changed massively there and there are some world-class riggers in the making. No doubt Romania will follow a similar path.
After a brief 48 hour turnaround back at Esinem Towers to ship out orders and get a change of undies, we were off to St Petersburg again for Ropefest. We arrived just after midnight at Polkovo airport to be driven to our hotel, conveniently sited right next to Aurora, the event venue. As they say, there’s no rest for the wicked and, indeed, as proof of that I had a 10am start for a class on the engineering of the gote the following day. So, by 9:30, we were washed and fed waiting in reception for Boris to whisk us away to his studio where Kinoko, Riccardo Wildties and I were teaching.
On Saturday, Ropefest began and the next two days were packed with shows, including two shows each of our own. Topping the bill was obviously Kinoko Hajime and his diminutive model Sakura, who even Nina towered over. Unfortunately, my shows where directly after and before his, so I was unable to catch either properly and, I blush to admit that we missed the play party and his cyber-show there as we were feeling pretty sleep deprived by this time. Although, what little I did see was, as always, superb.
Boris’s first show played heavily on the hi-energy ‘circus bondage’, as Osada Steve calls it, that has become his signature and was complimented nicely by his second which showed off his dexterity with a complex hishi harness .
My first, ‘Tying the Knot’, wedding themed show was intended to be based around dramatic suspension from Kazami which I had seen demonstrated on Gestalta and done with Gorgone. What we only discovered a few hours before the show was that Nina simply doesn’t bend that way. Gorgone is notorious for her bendy back and Gestalta knows no pain. So, as a result, our show was entirely improvised. It didn’t even follow the plan I had vaguely roughed out in my head since my hands just went off and did their own thing. I just went along with them and it seemed to work out OK.
Each show was very different, with varying degrees of stage craft and skill, but there has undoubtedly been a lot of progress. There were the obligatory Japanese themed shows, which is an aesthetic than never fails to hit the spot. In this vein, for the first time, I saw Philippe De Beaumond perform two very nice shows which were both beautiful and elegant. Wildties also went with the kimono theme for two very similar, but highly competently executed, sessions which he prefers to term as SM rather than art. It is clear that Moscow has had a big influence on his tying as the performances seemed to be more than a passing nod to Naka Akira’s shows there. Vlada and Falco were original as always. I was delighted to see them drawing on culture closer to home with their first performance featuring Vlada a street dancer with Falco as her love-lorn admirer and the second as a sinister KGB officer with he as her hapless prisoner. You can look forward to seeing one of these shows at our Festival.
The one big surprise, who as far as I am concerned came out of nowhere, was Kalahari. I had never heard of the guy and was taking a beer break, after filming the previous show, when Nina called me to watch him. He was casually dressed in a white sports shirt and I simply hadn’t noticed but this guy was good, very good. He knew how to handle the rope and I could see immediately that he had taken his influences from both Kinoko and Naka Akira. I’ll be posting some of his work very shortly.
On the subject of gallery updates, I have been busy editing video and starting to sort out the hundreds of photos from Russia. Not only have I been working on the 5hrs or so of video from Ropefest but I’m also addressing LFAJRB backlog. Hopefully, the technical monkeys will have finished their work on the new members area very soon and I can premier them there.
It was great to see so many old friends there, who we had met last year here and at our own Festival, and, of course, make new ones. There were far too many shows to write about all of them and our schedule fairly packed, especially if you factor in vodka drinking sessions and the recovery time thereof. Russian hospitality being what it is, a fair bit of vodka drinking was involved including detailed lessons from Boris in the correct way of consuming vodka accompanied by brown bread with thin slices of lard and other delicacies. For homework, we teamed up with Kinoko party one evening to carry out some research into the sensible levels of vodka consumption. I can report that we exceeded these limits and discovered the point at which small girls with the body-weight of a sparrow should retire from this game.
Anyway, a big thanks to Boris and the rest of the crew for a fun time once again. Большое спасибо!