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Viennese rope festival 2015 (part the first)

By |2024-08-18T14:07:45+00:00May 19th, 2015|Categories: Events, Festivals, Performance|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |

I meant to blog about this event right after it happened and was frankly unforgivably lazy about blogging for the longest time. Now I've blogged about an event since the guilt pressure is finally high enough that I'm going to actually write this up. This was our first time in Vienna and our first time in Austria. Aside from the fact that we would get to see some of Vienna we were excited to see some friends for the first time in what seemed like ages. Wildties, Redsabbath, Saki Kamijoo and her model Mayumi Sumi. It's incredible to think  that over the last couple of years we've met up with each other variously in London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, Chicago and now Vienna. It frankly is incredible to think that this kind of thing now seems so perfectly natural. As usual I'm going to have to take a moment to mention the people that organise events like this. I have to say that they very probably do a better job than I could and we were well looked after being collected from the airport and well informed about everything that was going on. I especially have to say thank you to those that spared their time to show us round some of their magnificent city. It's really spectacular. But before that the festival itself. We were really pleased to be asked to open the festivals shows and the venue was great being in a brewery in the city. The bar section where the opening was held was dark and filled with old blackened wood. It provided a great setting for the opening and a great atmosphere for the performance with the audience close [...]

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BED 2015 (part the third)

By |2024-08-18T17:38:08+00:00May 4th, 2015|Categories: Events, Performance|Tags: , , , , |

The after party performance night! I wanted to give this one a blog to itself as in the end it's a bit of a saga. To start with we'd had something like a total of 8 hours sleep over 3 days and frankly we felt like ass! I can't think of another way of describing it. We felt so bad that we had to say to DK (DallasKink) that we might not be able to do a show. We felt terrible, we looked worse, we had no music and hadn't any idea if we'd even make it through to the evening. We felt really bad for doing it but we were in truly terrible shape at that point. Five hour energy however is a thing and really helped out with a temporary boost. The more we thought about it the worse we felt. We really didn't want to let anyone down and for us we didn't want to let the event end on a flat note. So once we'd made it past the closing ceremony we went back to the room for showers and some preparation. I got a list of songs together and mailed them off.  Then we just went to sleep for a couple of hours. I have to say it's amazing what even a couple of hours of sleep can do to revive you. We were ready in time and at the hotel when there was nearly another disaster. I had probably made a mistake about if we were getting a lift from the hotel. We were worried about time but then someone going to the party said that the shows didn't start till 11 and we relaxed a bit. This could [...]

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BED 2015 (part the second)

By |2016-10-28T16:39:55+00:00May 4th, 2015|Categories: Events, Performance|Tags: , , , |

Saturday, BED is now in full swing. Breakfast at the hotel and then on to teach our first class. It's an early one and we have to be there right at the crack of 10:45 in the morning! Pressure and time is about rope bondage torture and the class was packed. I've got to say that we had a great time teaching the class and especially towards the end when people had questions arising from the class. Some as usual ran slightly off the class topic but if it's contributing something useful I never mind that in the Q & A section. It's really great when a class has a positive effect for people and leaves them with something that helps them get more out of their rope play. I want to take a line here to say how very much I appreciate everyone who's said and written to say what the class gave them. It certainly also lead on to some excellent follow up conversations in the next couple of days. The next class that we were personally involved with was the Kinbaku 360 class co taught by Demonsix, Kazami Ranki,  Ojipan, Faviola, Osaka Dan, Blue Risk and myself. The concept of this class looking at the development of the TK over time and the differences in execution and style even amongst today's practitioners where there is probably more variation than ever before is a very good one and I think made the point that there isn't really such a thing as a correct way to do a TK, though that of course doesn't exclude the fact that there are plenty of wrong ways to do one. As Kazami san said during the class [...]

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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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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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Shoot with Okissakki

By |2012-11-18T18:17:10+00:00November 18th, 2012|Categories: Shoots|Tags: , , , |

This was one of our very first shoots and I have to say what a pleasure it was. New to shoots though we were I think we got some good stuff here. Okissakki was great to work with and Clover captured her so well. I think this was only the second shoot we had done in our new 'studio' so getting used to things a lot. Okissakki isn't around on the scene much any more from what we've seen in the past few years; wherever she is and whatever she's decided to do now I wish her the very best of luck with it.

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Absent mindedness and routine cockups in rope bondage

By |2012-10-15T23:27:48+00:00October 15th, 2012|Categories: Learning|Tags: , , |

A friend today made a very good point about when he found things most likely to go wrong in rope bondage. And I absolutely agree with him on this. Often its when you’re doing the routine things, the small things, the things you’ve done a thousand times before. It’s in those moments when you’re running on automatic pilot rather than when you’re working on something on the edge where you’re focused and paying complete attention. You should be able to do some parts of your bondage completely without thought, you should know what you’re doing so well. The mistakes in things you have done a thousand times before happen not because you don’t know how to do it but because you are not focused. It is absence from the moment. It is something unregarded and considered unimportant. All things in rope bondage are important, from the first detail, especially from the first detail. Those brings me to the main point of this article. The need to be present in the moment. Now there is an apparent dichotomy in the concepts that you should know what you’re doing so well that you can do it without conscious thought and the idea that you must be present and focused in the moment. This dichotomy is however only apparent. There is a very big difference between having practised things so well that you can do them automatically i.e. that you have developed muscle memory for an action and by contrast, simply not paying attention to what you’re doing. When you are focused in the moment you are paying attention to all things including those things that you do automatically.

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Shoot with Rodm and Gestalta

By |2016-10-28T16:39:58+00:00September 8th, 2012|Categories: Shoots|Tags: , , , , , |

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far... OK a couple of years ago in Cambridge (The one in England not the one in Masachusetts.) I had the opportunity to do a  shoot of Japanese style rope bondage with English photographer Rodm and a model who's name I cannot now happily remember... happily for her because she flaked on the shoot with zero notice. Luckily Rod was able to get a replacement who very kindly came to the shoot at very short notice. This model was Gestalta and she was a real pleasure to work with. I think we got some really great stuff in the end. I was particularly happy with the Hojo hishi nawa. I think generally the shibari in this shoot works well and Rod captured the bondage and the mood. So these are some bondage pictures I'm very happy to have been involved in making. All credit though to our great model Gestalta (who has since modelled for, amongst others,  Kazami Ranki notably in performance at the Festival of the Art of Japanese bondage).  

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