While I’m writing this I am in a plane on my way back home. I just finished a short tour to Prague and the Prague shibari festival and to Moscow where the RopeMarks Ryu weekend intensive was happening, preluded by a masquerade ball themed Russian mass murderers (what’s in a name :)).  In this blog I will talk a bit about the Prague Shibari Festival.

For me there has always been a pull towards the Czech Republic and specifically Prague. I can not explain this feeling, the closest I can get is that Prague has a “magical” feel to it. Unfortunately there were always reasons to not go, either as a tourist or as RopeMarks, so when we got the invite to be present on the Prague Shibari Festival there was no doubt about my answer: Yes!

If there’s something close to rope heaven, it must be the Prague Shibari Festival. This three day event, this year (perfectly) organized for the third time, is all about rope. A whole lot, 150 (?), of riggers and bunnies from several countries came together to participate in a wide variety of workshops, work on techniques, geek out on the details, experiment with different styles and of course: enjoy two evenings with awesome shows.

As a presenter I had a great time here. Since I’ve been tying professionally for almost two decades (eeek!) I see the rope scene evolving, often drifting away from the traditional Japanese style. Luckily there are still loads of people gravitating to the magic and beauty of kinbaku. There’s just something about it.

For this event I took the participants deep into arm-binders and how to adjust them for a wide range of body types. Then, in my masterclass “questioning the gote”, we literally dissected the gote. The most rewarding thing for me was to see how many “aha moments” the riggers experienced when they realized that there is no such thing as the gote, just a  sum of parts. Or better: as the sum of an infinite amount of possible parts. This realization opens up new worlds that they could used in my workshop for advanced suspensions and transitions.

Part of presenting on the Prague Shibari Festival means performing live, and so I did. Together with Spring (awesome rope bunny supreme) we performed a kinbaku show showing elements from our workshops while staying close to what we believe kinbaku is, or can be, with a serious touch of semenawa and humor.

Since Prague was on “my list” for so long we stayed a few days in what I can only call “the beautiful city of Prague”. The city is stunning and the people are so relaxed.

I want to thank the organizer, Soptik Z and his team for the great event and the participants of my workshops for their enthousiasme before, during and after the workshops and for the appreciation of the live act we performed.

After Prague and the Shibari Festival it was time to travel along to Moscow for the RopeMarks Ryu weekend intensive and Russian mass murderers ball. I will write more about that in the next blog.

Original text by Spring and butchered before publishing by Bob

Prague Shibari Festival | Soptik Zet | Prague | Moscow | RopeMarks