These folks join our digital meeting spaces from local, regional, national and international stages. They have been hand-picked from an incredibly talented applicant pool and we are delighted to announce them here.
More presenters will be added as they accept their offers.
And now…in painstakingly random order – our magical presenters, demo bottoms, and facilitators:
Shay is a vivacious femme switch and prominent self-suspender with over a decade of experience educating, hosting, and performing around the US and internationally. Her background as a medical professional informs her passion for risk awareness education. She is based in San Francisco, where she produces BENT, the Bay Area’s biggest dungeon party, and acclaimed bondage & fetish performance event Twisted Windows. She is the creator and writer of SelfSuspend.com and bondage safety site RemedialRopes.com. Shay identifies as a purveyor of perversion, pansexual polyamorist playslut, and alliteration fetishisist!
Sara without an H is an instructor and performer in the Philadelphia area. She has been teaching movement for over ten years in formats including pole fitness, lyra (aerial hoop), chair dance, burlesque, twerk, and floor work. SWAH produces the aerial burlesque shows decaDANCE and Cirque Noir, which combine the strength of aerials with the seduction of burlesque, and mix in kink and sideshow. As a kinkster, she is an avid rope bunny and demo bottom, and enjoys fire, electro, needle, and impact play. She is passionate about movement as a means to self-discovery.
Miss_Acacia has been creating art in rope bondage and suspension since 2014. With a preference for symmetry and a focus on detail, her goal is to create a tie that works for her bottom’s body while still showcasing the beauty of rope. Starting with self-suspension, she progressed to suspending others with an understanding of both sides of the suspension experience. She continues to focus on the fundamentals no matter how far her rope journey takes her, because she wants to understand the how and the why behind the structure of each tie. Once she feels she understands the purpose of each part, she is able to use them to transition and contort her bottom with the right ties for that sequence. She is frequently brainstorming with fellow rope enthusiasts to improve harnesses and make the most sustainable ties for her bottoms. In teaching, she focuses on making sure that bottoms and tops both grasp what the rope should look and feel like. She teaches for understanding of how each part and pattern works instead of memorizing patterns so that her students are better equipped to continue their education.
I’m a born and raised Austinite.
My rope journey started as a rope bunny, in 2017. Then I started self suspending, quickly followed by starting to Top. From the time I started tying till my first suspension, was over a year. I believe in taking your time when learning about rope bondage. I am a certified personal trainer and have a degree in education. With these two major facts about me, I believe, help me teach clear and concise rope skills as a bottom, top and switch.
Gentleebrutal was introduced into this world of kink 2012. Since then he has explored many aspect of kink and have been enjoying every aspect of it. Rope was his entry point to this world and his love of it has been growing since then.
He love the intimacy, connection and trust that you build with rope.
He is lucky to have great mentors that thought me the beauty of kinbaku.
Beyonder is a friendly local Rope Nerd who has spent the last decade in the Boston scene tying, being tied, teaching, and being taught. Has been known to get "overly technical" and emphasize skill, competence, and safety over "connectedness". Dislikes: Japanophilia, entitlement, and the boola boola.
Apterous has taught everything from basic ties to self-suspension and partered suspension transitions at many events in the Boston area. In her free time, she copes with her severe knitting problem.
Ode2Joy (Joy) is a therapist by day, but an experienced rope bottom, a presenter, and a lion cub (not a kitten!) the rest of the time. In a collared 24/7 D/s dynamic since 2015, she thrives on detailed protocol, open communication, and laughing in the face of danger. Often known for being a brat to her partner BDSLR, her love language is planning things, and she can often be found bouncing around excitedly planning their next adventures. She’s passionate about sharing her knowledge and experiences, especially when it comes to rope bottoming, D/s or poly relationships, and facilitating healthy, honest communication. Joy’s local to the Baltimore, MD community, but has presented and performed at both national and international level conferences and performances.
In recent years, the only time BDSLR has put down rope is to pick up his camera. He entered the scene in 2015 as an experienced travel photographer and soon began taking kink-oriented photos for the cosplay/rope project Belle Bondage and local events. He was the featured artist at Dark Odyssey’s SummerCamp in 2016, and his work has been displayed at Charm City Play Space in Baltimore, MD and Philly Music Hall in Philadelphia, PA. In regards to rope, he has been mixing sadism, beauty and power dynamics to create his own style, and tying multiple times a week for rope lab, photography, and play. BDSLR has presented both nationally and internationally, with recent conferences including Tethered Together 2019, BED 2019, and Desert Bound 2019, and has performed at Nuit des Cordes in Montreal in 2017 and 2018 and Dark Odyssey Fusion 2018.
Lubegirl(she/her) is a Rope Switch out of the NYC area. Bubbly, personable, and passionate about kink education on both sides of the slash, her goal is to break the stereotypes and myths of Rope (particularly synthetic), one class at a time.
Playing on both sides of the rope since Summer 2015, Lubegirl is currently the leader of the NYC chapter of Hitchin’ Bitches and a facilitator of the NY Rope Collective. She uses her platform to encourage other female identifying kinksters to learn the basics of rope while facilitating a safe space for bottoms of all orientations, sizes, and identity.
Nevertheless and 12cats have been tying together since 2015. Their first scene with rope took 6 ropes to bind someone to a table. Since then, they’ve been focusing on minimalism and simplicity. They take a team approach to rope bondage, working together to achieve beautiful body positions in both suspension and floor work, as well as evoking powerful emotions in their play. Together they bring playful fun, a positive outlook, and really bad jokes.
oublietta (she/her) is a power-fluid sadomasochist based out of Toronto, Canada. She is a teacher and performer of dance, rope, and kink. Her work and play often reflect themes of desire, brutality, futility, power, violation, and repair.
She has been teaching and performing integrated rope since 2016 and has been an internationally touring dancer since 2012. Her two-decade dance adventure spans belly dance, jazz, ballet, and modern, among others. She is the choreographer of Repair, a one-act work featuring a fusion of contemporary belly dance and shibari.
Her goal is to create art and learning environments that facilitate people of all identities, backgrounds, and orientations as they explore their individual expressions of sensual, beautiful, and raw.
Lief has been a rope Switch for the past five years. They have been obsessed with rope even before getting the chance to pick it up and now they can’t put it down. They got their start in the Boston scene attending monthly skill shares and attending rope cons such as Bound in Boston and FIRE. Since moving to Los Angeles, they have grown to become a part of the local community teaching classes at TieHaus and Voxbody, teaching privates, and creating queer kink art. Lief is excited to share their passion with you.
Lief is available for group classes, privates, private sessions, and photoshoots.
Icarus is a queer, non-binary, switchy pain enthusiast who started their rope bottoming exploration in 2013. Their teaching has developed in kink in tandem with their career in social services, focusing on intersectionality and exploring power dynamics in consent negotiations. Icarus now resides in Los Angeles where they are most passionate about building systems of community care and creating queer performance art with their kink family.
samjay is known for NYC Street Shibari and novel predicament ties. His work can be seen in ArtPlay and Fet-Erotica magazines. Since picking up the ropes in Melbourne, Australia in 2011, samjay has studied with a long list of influences. While he draws inspiration liberally from those sources, he’s since forged his own direction, fluently navigating between various styles for the purpose at hand. While samjay rarely uses anything other than rope in his scenes, he uses elements of his environment to create novelty, intensity, fear and, through these, connection.
Zero-Gi is a New York-based rope nerd/artist with boundless curiosity and an insatiable thirst for adventure. True to her nom-de-guerre, she’s rarely seen on solid ground and is known for taking shibari into new worlds- to great heights, the streets, and every creative outlet she can find. She has flown across North America and the pages of ArtPlay and Fet-Erotica in her collaborations and strives to always push herself, her partners, and the envelope in the name of science, art, or a hell of an experience. Her passionate priorities as both student and teacher include enthusiastic pursuit of self-awareness, risk-awareness, and team-building, the fundamental pillars of her practice.
Ruby is a rope bottom, educator and brat extraordinaire living in Western Massachusetts. She’s been bottoming for rope for a year and switching in kink for 5+ years! Her passions lie in mean rope, challenging suspensions, silly scenes, and all the queer weirdness that the kink community has to offer. Her primary goals as a bottom educator include consent and negotiation knowledge and tactics, safety in rope and kink, and helping newbies and seasoned kinksters alike navigate the kink scene with confidence and autonomy. She and Willow co-founded the Western Mass Rope Collective which hosts monthly skill shares, and aims to provide rope education to the greater WMass area!
Dr Timaree Schmit (She/her) has been a sex educator for more of her life than not and is on this planet to bring rational, sex-positive, empirically-based knowledge about sexuality to audiences everywhere. She works as an adjunct professor, guest lecturer, writer, consultant, and host of the Sex with Timaree podcast and co host of DTF: Darryl and Timaree Fun Hour podcast. She is the LGBTQ and Sexuality affairs contributing writer for Philly Weekly and a long-time community organizer in the queer performance scene, and advocate for sex workers rights.
-magnolia- is a former ballerina, and current yogi and yoga instructor. She has 14 years of experience as a massage therapist and esthetician and over 2 years of rope bottoming experience. She has performed at numerous events throughout the U.S. including Ropecraft New Orleans and Chicago, Vox Body Studio in Oakland ,CA, and the BARE booth at the Folsom Street Fair. -Magnolia- also runs a group for Rope Bottoms called BOA (rope Bottoms of Austin ) in Austin, Texas. Drawing from her anatomy and movement knowledge she has developed a bottoming philosophy that is unique. Through this body awareness she feels like she can hold stressful ties longer and push positions that she was not able to do before
Willow is a natural teacher and an engaging, inventive player with many years of experience in a wide variety of kinks. As a sadomasochistic switch, his classes are designed to speak to both the top and the bottom of a scene, (since without one or the other, you are left with his self suspension class!) Willow enjoys breath play, rope, pony play, needles, knives, and thuddy things and is now turning his years of experience on both sides of the reins into comprehensive classes on sadistic rope, venipuncture, and more!