Romaine & Milena – Announcing presenter
Romaine is a Swiss-based rigger and model. She started her journey in ropes about 15 years ago as a model and quickly discovered that tying is at least as much fun. She’s still enjoying both sides now.
She has been inspired by many great riggers, be them Japanese or European, but her style is difficult to pin down to one school or one person. Her approach is very much influenced by her practice and interest in massages and dance. Movement, touch, breath, rhythm, body awareness and presence are very important elements of her tying. The sessions she enjoys the most are those where improvisation and flow are given a lot of space.
“Ropes are for me a perfect way to take our partner, lover, or friend on a journey, make them forget about everything else. I seek connection and intensity in my play and this is what I am keen to create when I tie. I want to get close to the person, listen to them, to what their body and mine crave for, and guide them as much as possible into an altered state of consciousness. That can take many forms, depending on the relationship and the mood of the session.”
Find out more about Romaine at her website romainekohler.ch.
Milena is a Swiss-based artist, photographer, and co-founder of Endorphine Studio, an ethical and feminist porn studio (@endorphine_studio). She discovered ropes a few years ago and has quickly become addicted. She started as a model and is now starting to explore ropes as a rigger.
Workshops
Exploration around power exchange
(Workshop level: L1-3)
Playing with power exchange requires a certain confidence in yourself as the rigger, a willingness to surrender as the bottom, a partner you can trust, and the right mood and environment for it.
In this workshop, we will explore ways with which you can access your personal power as a top, and how you can nourish the power dynamics as a bottom.
More than certain patterns, we will then see how you can use intention in your ropes to infuse more power into your tying. We will also look at ways to play with position, movement, rhythm, strength, sound, breath and touch and how they can be used to heighten the feeling of being controlled and held for the person you’re tying.
From body manipulation to dance
(Workshop level: L1-3)
The focus of this workshop will be on movement and how we can use movement in our ropes to change the dynamics and the energy of the session.
We will start by reviewing some basic ways to move the person (from seiza to broken seiza, from sitting to lying, etc.) and gradually move to more advanced ways to play with movement, balance and imbalance. The idea is to step by step have enough understanding (with the head) and felt sense (with the body) to move the person in a way that feels good and to be able to follow them in their movement. We will also see what works best depending on how the person is tied up (hands in front or in the back, with or without legs, etc.) and how you can use the rope as leverage in your manipulation.
In the end, the idea is not only to move the person from one position to the next but also to move together in a fluid and explorative way, depending on the flow of the session, where the dynamics lead you, and how both bodies interact.
Touch in ropes
(Workshop level: L1-3)
This workshop will offer you a space to explore how you can integrate conscious touch in your play to create more emotion, intensity and connection.
What is the right balance between tying with the rope and touching with our hand? What if we touch with our foot, our forearm, our face? How can slowing down and playing with different rhythms create various dynamics? How can we use touch to create something that feels soothing, invasive, frightening, sexual, shaming, etc.?
How we touch is impacted by how present we are in the moment. The first focus of this workshop will therefore be the exploration of touch with our full presence and a strong body awareness.
