Andrew Braxas & Nëya – Announcing presenters

Andrew Braxas

Andrew Braxas first fell in love with Kinbaku in 2016 when he attended the Kinbaku Dojo Berlin. Since then, his life has been a whirlwind of private tuition, workshops and rope events. He began his journey in Osada style and although he has evolved a lot since then, he owes a lot to the incredibly detailed and thorough education that he received.

As the owner of Belfast Kinbaku Dojo, Braxas has been teaching bondage on a weekly basis for a number of years and places a strong emphasis on technical understanding combined with emotional interaction.

To Braxas, Kinbaku isn’t about patterns or pretty shapes. Patterns are a tool, and pretty shapes are the by-product. Kinbaku is about taking your own internal emotional monologue and turning it into an external emotional dialogue. The journey is the goal. By taking elements from a number of different styles, combining it with his own techniques, Braxas is developing his own, unique, approach.

Find out more about Andrew Braxas at his FetLife.

Nëya

Even though Nëya found herself firstly in the role of the rigger and she still ties in active role more often than the passive one, in the last couple of years she started focusing on the model role a lot as well. Nëya went through several not just technical but also emotional styles of tying and gathered a lot of insights about her way to experience rope from the other side.

The thing that matters to her the most, when it comes to rope bottoming, is authenticity. Nëya is trying to find that very aspect within all her sessions as well as teaching. Emotional and physical safety has many ways and rules and are the most important when models learn about rope but at the end it all comes back to the goal we have. Which could vary from aerial shows to emotional one rope sessions. All of this is valid if we are true to ourselves and our partners and Nëya’s goal as a teacher is to show this to her audience.

She has been teaching at Subspace studio in Prague since 2018 and she has also taught on both sides of rope throughout Europe.

Find out more about Nëya at her Instagram.

Powerful Partials

(Workshop level: L3)

Partials can be more challenging than full suspensions and sometimes offer more versatility. This gives us the options to use both our ropes and also the ground to create different sensations and a variety of emotional responses from our model. The ground can be your friend, but it can also be the enemy.

Breaking Aesthetics

(Workshop level: L3)

Often, we will focus on creating the perfect shape, and by following an exact series of steps we can do that. In this workshop we will turn this idea on its head and use every possibility to deform a shape and make our partners look and feel broken.

By taking a simple shape and adding nuance, we can deconstruct the expected result and create a sense of being totally bound in a chaotic and fractured way. Our goal will be to let go of the perfect shape and instead focus on contortion. We will use every possibility; fingers, toes, hair etc to make our partners feel completely tied. This can be a very powerful tool.

We will seek the things that look like they shouldn’t work but do. In some ways, inspired by kintsugi, we will find the beauty in the broken.

Over-tying on the Floor

(Workshop level: L1-3)

The power of over-tying cannot be overstated and is not limited to Partials and suspensions. By applying some simple techniques, we can create strict and emotionally powerful sessions, without ever leaving the floor. In this workshop, we will explore some of these techniques, and enjoy some floorwork shapes which can have an unexpected intensity.

Building a Session

(Workshop level: L1-3)

Everyone approaches rope in a different way, some like more playful rope, some enjoy exploring shame and others prefer tormenting rope. Whatever your approach, this workshop will explore different techniques that you can adapt to your individual intention.

Knowing your intention will give you the power to communicate with your rope, but also before you even start to tie. You will learn how to make you partner nervous, calm, how to create fear, distance or closeness.

How can we communicate that with our partners without talking? This workshop will give you the tools, and the know-how, to build your session from the ground up.