Monday
Today we started with the 5-day professionals workshop by Hajime Kinoko in Berlin. We had arrived on saturday after a long train ride. We had no idea what to expect, how many people would be there, what the level of the workshops and the other people was going to be etc. Well, there are 12 couples participating, some fammiliar faces from LFAJB, many from Germany and Denmark. We have at least four Peters in the group :-). And the level is very high, with no-one needing step by step instructions.
The first day started out with practicing the Kinoko-style 3-rope Takate Kote as he wanted to make sure everybody can do that harness and gets the tensions right. He took his timing explaining many details, more even than in London. After that everybody got to practice while Kinoko and his two assistants were walking around checking the patterns and the tensions. I was glad to hear my tensions were good!
Second part of the workshop was learning the Kinoko-style hip harness. It’s bit of a signature tie for him when he uses it as a bridge-tie for suspension (horizontal, face up, supported onlly by the hips, like shown here). It’s not a very difficult tie, but with pluu it hurt a bit more than expected, so she asked Kinoko to tie her to see if it was different from my tie. With a little more rope and slightly different rope placement it felt better, but still hurt a bit.
Finally, he taught us a harness without the arms included (more “shinju” style, but in the same friction-based style as the other ties) that continued into hip supports. This harness can be used for (self)suspension and he showed a nice combination with the hands in front and the legs/feet up – toes shoint point upwards for aesthetics – that was reasonably comfortable.
Fortunately, there was plennty of time to practice, so during the smoking break pluu got to practice the hip support on me as well, and afterwards she even did the the suspension from the third part on me.