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About wykd

WykD_Dave (Dave Rickman) is a UK-based shibari bondage enthusiast, who now teaches and performs internationally accompanied by his partner Clover. He started exploring bondage 27 years ago and was autodidact for the first 17 years, until a lesson with shibari professional Osada Steve changed his way of tying. Dave loves Japanese style rope work, and decided to dedicate himself to this. “It isn’t about the rope, it’s about the expression, the look in the eyes, the hopelessness, the agony”. Now, Dave & Clover teach and perform all around the world. He takes great pleasure in seeing people get it and open their minds to what rope bondage can really be. “Not just a means of restraint but a much deeper and personally connected experience than any other I’ve ever found.” Running into Dave means running into his lovely partner Clover. She is very passionate about shibari bondage too, she models and performs, as well as makes impressive photos of Japanese rope work done by Dave. Her photography focuses on the feelings involved in rope play, not just the pretty ties, and she tells stories with her pictures. Dave: “Of course Clover’s a huge part of everything. Without her photography would people ever have noticed?”
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BED 2014 Good times shibari Bar-b-q rope jamming cook-out!

By |2016-10-28T16:39:55+00:00May 13th, 2014|Categories: Festivals, Learning, Performance, Teaching, Workshops|Tags: , , , , , , , |

I don't even know where to begin with this blog. BED was a complete blast from start to finish. The people of Dallas were great to us and the people of BED especially. This event really has a special atmosphere and has won a special place in our hearts. I'd like to say right off that this event treats presenters better than any conference I've been to in the USA. The team really made an effort to make us welcome and at home. I can't tell you how much we appreciate this kind of effort. It really made a difference to our stay. Highlights of the event include our first show in 6 months. Dinners with friends and seeing people improve in classes. I honestly do love it when you see someone make real progress right there in a class and take away things that can help them improve for a long time to come. It's a cool thing and I never grow tired of it.  My sincere thanks to everyone that came. Next of course seeing Kinoko Hajime san perform again for the first time in a couple of years. BED has a really personal atmosphere, while there's quite a few people there and you cannot of course spend a lot of time with everyone but  many people became familiar and more familiar to us. When we left we were really aware that we were leaving friends behind.  The after party! The after party at TheChurchDallas was an amazing blast. We really had a fun time performing. Thanks to everyone who came and gave such amazing reactions, you really contributed to the atmosphere and our own experience on stage. I can't tell you what it's like to [...]

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Baltimore Play House (2012)

By |2016-10-28T16:39:55+00:00May 5th, 2014|Categories: Performance|Tags: , , , |

Back in 2012 we had the great pleasure of staying with Hammer, Roxy and Lochai in Baltimore after that year's Shibaricon. While this is something of a late blog I wanted to catch up some of the writings I always meant to do while I have the chance. We really enjoyed Baltimore and rarely for us had a chance to wonder around a little and see a bit of Baltimore and have some excellent wine and food. We especially enjoyed sea food on the harbour where in typical style we ended up in a Japanese restaurant (recurring theme emerging here). Great crab none the less. Our hosts had told us that we must try the crab in Baltimore and they were very right about that. We also did a little bit of shooting and tied and shot the lovely Bella. Click here to see the full gallery! We'd like to say thanks to everyone that made us feel so welcome in Baltimore. One cool thing there was visiting the Baltimore Play House and giving an impromptu show there. The Play House has since fallen victim to a fire and that's a shame as it was such a friendly place. This video is thanks to our good friend Murphy (BlueRisk). Thanks to everyone who came to see us at the Play House we had a blast. We really appreciated your kind words and hospitality. D & C

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LA 2014 Shibari classes and good times.

By |2016-10-28T16:39:56+00:00May 4th, 2014|Categories: Teaching, Workshops|Tags: , , |

This was our first trip to LA and we were really looking forward to it for a variety of reasons. First off this trip wouldn't have happened without the good offices and organisation of our friends in LA. We sincerely thank you all for your amazing hospitality and help. The classes Saturday, April 19 One Rope Tension Sunday, April 20 Rope control and movement Unthinking rope I want to say what a pleasure it was to teach in LA at the Bordello of Decadence. This is a great space and we enjoyed teaching and playing there very much. At the classes every person that came showed improvement and I hope took away lessons to help them continue to improve after the classes. It's a great pleasure for me to see a class have a positive effect on those attending. Shopping We had a really good time shopping in Downtown's 'Little Tokyo' region. Great shops and people. We were able to get some things that we usually have to order direct from Japan at very reasonable prices and without British customs scalping us for import duty on even the smallest items. The people and shop keepers of Little Tokyo were very nice and helpful, I'd really recommend visiting if you get the chance. Culture We had to visit the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. Fortunately while we were in LA there was an exhibition on Japanese American tattoo artists. Tattoo Exhibition Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, California The exhibition was only there for a limited time so sadly you can't visit this after September 2014. Beach Finally we got to be really tourists seeing Hollywood and the beach. [...]

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Taboo magazine cover Shibari Bondage

By |2013-12-29T13:05:26+00:00December 29th, 2013|Categories: Random, Shoots|Tags: , , , , , , |

In an excellent round of to our working year we have a magazine cover. This is the cover of Hustler's Taboo magazine. The model for this shoot was the lovely and very sexy MaYa Homerton. A wonderful model to work with and just one of the nicest people you could wish to work with. We're looking forward to working with her again in the new year. This year has seen so much good stuff and it's a delight to end on another high point. Just amazing for us. Thank you to everyone who's given us great feedback on this. We really appreciate it.   Dave.

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Robert Wilson, Lady Gaga and the Louvre

By |2016-10-28T16:39:56+00:00December 3rd, 2013|Categories: Events, Shoots|Tags: , , , |

From my personal blog on WykD.com I’ve been very lucky recently to get to work with some incredible people. Most recently it was a privilege and a pleasure to work with the American director and veteran of the Avant-garde Robert Wilson and with the model for one of Wilson’s video portraits, Lady Gaga who I had the pleasure of tying and suspending. The result of this I’m blown away to say is a portrait that is now hanging in every sense in the Louvre gallery in Paris as part of Robert Wilson’s Living Rooms installation. The installation will be at the Louvre till February 17, 2014 I had this opportunity only due to the kindness and good will of a very great friend. I consider myself very fortunate to have been a part of this and to have worked with so many great and talented people. On a more personal note... The Robert Wilson portrait of Lady Gaga now hanging in the Louvre. I pretty much can't believe this even now. Something I've worked on is right now hanging in the Louvre gallery in Paris. Just incredible. I could not have imagined such a thing even months ago. Earlier this year I worked on a feature film and saw its first showing at the Raindance festival. I have had the pleasure of working with a lot of extraordinary beautiful and surprising models. This one however was the Mother Monster of surprises! Here is Lady Gaga's own comment on her Little Monsters website. I got to work with some extraordinary people. My personal thanks to everyone for making me feel so welcome on location especially those that were kind to the rope guy trying to get [...]

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The film love.honour.obey

By |2016-10-28T16:39:56+00:00December 1st, 2013|Categories: Film|Tags: , , |

love.honour.obey The thriller love.honour.obey A film by Raindance raw talent directed by Ate de Jong Earlier this year I had an amazing experience working on a new film. This full length feature thriller features some shibari rope bondage. It was my great pleasure to be able to supply this for the movie. The first showing of this movie will be on Monday September 30th at 9:00pm A home invasion irrevocably changes the lives of all involved in ways neither victims nor perpetrator could have imagined. The showing is on the Monday immediately following the London Festival of the Art of Japanese Bondage in London. It was an amazing experience being involved in a project like this and to work with so many wonderful people. I'm not going to give away anything that happens in the film. You'll just have to watch it and see.

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Luck, self awareness, responsibility & rope bondage injuries.

By |2013-11-30T10:37:22+00:00November 30th, 2013|Categories: Learning|Tags: , , , , , |

This article is one of those that you wish didn’t need to be written about. However here I am writing it anyway. So what is is that I’m going to write about here that I wish I wasn’t? Rope inflicted injuries! Rope isn’t safe, especially not suspension. However having said that it doesn’t mean that we should accept injuries as a matter of course, they should be few and far between. I am horrified when people shrug off injuries to models with an ‘oh well, these things happen’. Well once in a while maybe. When there are repeated injuries occurring it’s time to ask yourself some serious questions. When it comes to injuries some people are more ‘unlucky’ than others. Generally the better a rigger is the ‘luckier’ they tend to get. Bad riggers just tend to have more ‘accidents’ the more they rig. Now I would expect someone who has inflicted multiple injuries to stop rigging so much, to go and look at the common themes in these injuries, to work very hard to stop them occurring again. What I’m horrified to hear is ‘well these things happen’. Yeh, they happen to you don’t they? Can we guess why? When it happens to multiple models in multiple sessions you have to look for the factor that’s common to all the injuries. And that common factor is likely to be the person tying. In all the tying I’ve done, all the models, all the time, all the suspensions I’ve had 3 nerve injuries. Two of those I’ve identified the cause and can ensure that they won’t happen again. One I simply have no concrete idea, I’ve spoken to medical professionals, never had the same problem [...]

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Luck, self awareness, responsibility & rope bondage injuries.

By |2016-10-28T16:39:56+00:00November 30th, 2013|Categories: Learning|Tags: , , , , , |

This article is one of those that you wish didn’t need to be written about. However here I am writing it anyway. So what is is that I’m going to write about here that I wish I wasn’t? Rope inflicted injuries! Rope isn’t safe, especially not suspension. However having said that it doesn’t mean that we should accept injuries as a matter of course, they should be few and far between. I am horrified when people shrug off injuries to models with an ‘oh well, these things happen’. Well once in a while maybe. When there are repeated injuries occurring it’s time to ask yourself some serious questions. When it comes to injuries some people are more ‘unlucky’ than others. Generally the better a rigger is the ‘luckier’ they tend to get. Bad riggers just tend to have more ‘accidents’ the more they rig. Now I would expect someone who has inflicted multiple injuries to stop rigging so much, to go and look at the common themes in these injuries, to work very hard to stop them occurring again. What I’m horrified to hear is ‘well these things happen’. Yeh, they happen to you don’t they? Can we guess why? When it happens to multiple models in multiple sessions you have to look for the factor that’s common to all the injuries. And that common factor is likely to be the person tying. In all the tying I’ve done, all the models, all the time, all the suspensions I’ve had 3 nerve injuries. Two of those I’ve identified the cause and can ensure that they won’t happen again. One I simply have no concrete idea, I’ve spoken to medical professionals, never had the same problem [...]

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BBB after party July 2013

By |2016-10-28T16:39:56+00:00July 22nd, 2013|Categories: Events, Teaching|Tags: , , , |

First thing's first, it's not often we do workshops in the UK, usually we do most of our work in the US or mainland Europe. So it was a nice surprise to be asked to do a workshop at the BBB in Birmingham in the UK, it's the biggest fetish fair in the UK and in all the time we've been doing rope round the world we'd never been asked to do anything at the BBB so it was a real pleasure to be asked. Our thanks to Dragon George and Midstar for thinking of us. Dragon George and Midstar run Exodus UK in Birmingham and it's a really great club, not to mention that George does some of the most cracking dungeon furniture you could imagine. If you've been to the BBB after party and seen the equipment there or visited Exodus you'll know what I mean. So to the workshop itself... First the day was pretty hot and I'd like to say how good it was of everyone to get involved and tying in all that heat and in many cases in all that latex and pvc. I really loved that everyone got involved regardless of their experience and had a good time. Thanks to everyone who expressed their enjoyment. I'm really glad that you had a good time and hope you got something you're going to use for some good clean kinky fun.

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Shibaricon 2012 Favourite moments.

By |2016-10-28T16:39:56+00:00June 2nd, 2013|Categories: Events, Festivals, Learning, Performance, Teaching, Workshops|Tags: , , , , , |

Learning that a photographic hero and inspiration, Norio Sugiuar would be there. Getting nervous about meeting him. Being so pleased to meet him and having the chance to get a print in person.Takeshi Nagaike san's good humour, charm and old school tying style. It was very much a pleasure to meet him. Getting to go to the Andersen Japanese gardens for the first time, picking up some nice hashi. Visiting the Asian market on the way back and getting an Agatsuma CD I didn't have. Saki Kamijoo san just being so infectiously fun and instantly fitting into the mind as one of those people that you're just always glad to see. Having some time with Milla Reika san and discovering the sweet, un-egotistical, enthusiastic and grounded person behind the mistress image. Iambic9 for being one of the most unassumingly nice and generous people I can think of. Tying Indigozebra who is just such a sweetheart. Getting to perform again (I'm aware that we may have run just a fraction over time for which I apologise). MarkDV8's generosity of spirit truly catching me off guard and really touching me. Tying friends in the dungeon. Being only the third person to really tie Beemo, thanks for the trust. Giving Amy Morgan a stressfull old school experience on the bamboo frame. Somewhat more seriously getting into it with Clover and then having a great time tying sugrah! That was hot and hot again. Getting some M0co jute to try. I've never had a single specific rope for Ichinawa but couldn't resist getting a piece of Oniroku Nawa for that purpose and as yet another souvenir. Getting a new kimono for Clover from the lovely Japanese lady who was [...]

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