Friday
We travelled to London on Thursday morning, so we started of with a quiet afternoon in London and getting settled. We travelled tgether with Mack and Laura, one of our models for our show. Rave (our other model) had travelled to London a day earlier with Akahige (translating for Kinoko at the festival), Nadine and Arnoud. Until the opening of the art night we had some time for sightseeing, but unfortunately a lot of shops were closed on (Good) Friday.
The festival took place at the Resistance Gallery. Its atmoshere and audience had a squat-like
atmosphere, very relaxed, friendly people, well furnished with two suspension frames of which one was on stage. The ideal night to take a look around and get familiar with the location. And to shoot some pictures. Pluu also set up her shop, so people would be able to buy ropes & other gear at the venue.
There were a few shows planned on the opening night. Esinem did a wonderfull show with his dancing lady. Shadow & Felix gave a very expressive performance, and, of course, Hajime Kinoko did a wonderful performance (GALLERY HERE).
We didn’t stay for too long after the shows, as we knew we were going to be teaching in early on saturday, and we wanted to take the photography class by Rod McDonald ourselves.
Saturday
On saturday we took the photography class by Rod McDonald, who did an excellent presentation on using light in bondage photography. I hope to use some of the ideas I got during the workshop soon in a new shoot. After that, we did the introduction to japanese style bondage workshop, which was – as usual – fun, but very intense. I really like teaching people the first basic ties, but it is very intense showing everything step by step. The workshop went fine though, with Rave as an additional model, giving pluu the opportunity to walk around and assist people. My English also was better than I had expected. Unfortunately, Kinoko was teaching at the same time, so we missed his chest harnesses workshop. However, someone took pictures and video of it, so hopefully we will be able to reproduce it anyway.
In the afternoon we participated in Zamil’s workshop, who taught a Tasuki in an authentic Japanese style. Very interesting, and a valuable addition to our repertoire. Also, Shadow did a workshop on self-suspension which was fun to watch, even though not something I’ll be trying soon.
Finally, we got word that Jess of BeShibari had fallen ill, so she and Marc had to cancell their classes. Dasniya Sommers took over on saturday, and we offered to take over Marc’s partial suspension classes, shifting them to the sunday morning. That meant another early start, but we weren’t planning on going to subversion, so we got home pretty early.
In a few days, I’ll post more about the Sunday & Monday.