Past Events

Session 1: Rope dance & Rope 101

There will be two workshops running simultaneously, and it’s your choice which one you take part in.

Rope dance

This style of rope focuses on the rhythm and movement of two bodies working together, with the rope as a tool to allow creative positions and new ways of sharing weight. In this session we’ll give some exercises and tips for building your comfort with more free-form movement and dance-inspired rope. You’ll leave this session with more confidence moving in space, improved rope-handling skills in tricky situations, and body manipulation tricks.
Whether you want to learn to flow and twirl as you tie or get tied or simply make your scenes less static in some way, there will be something for you!

Pre-requisites:
- People tying: a solid single column of your choice, comfort moving with your partner
- People being tied: Good communication from inside rope, awareness of your boundaries, comfort moving with your partner.

Rope 101

Our well known 101 sessions return to teach you rope handling, basic skills and communication. You'll leave this class being able to tie a body up and glean some starter tips on how to be tied.

This class is suitable for people brand new to rope, and those who've been to a 101 before but still have some more questions around the fundamentals. There'll definitely be something new for you to learn.

Why not come along and take your next step on your rope journey?

Pre-requisites: none

Session 2: One-rope scenes

In this session we’ll do a deep dive into building scenes around a single rope (or two ropes joined together). This style of rope means you never have ‘too much’ rope to deal with, and focuses on the connection and communication you can build with repeated tying and untying within a single scene. You really can do a lot with a little!
We’ll focus on how to create connection from the very beginning of a scene, non-verbal communication skills, creating space to listen, and the different opportunities for play available in short-term vs long-term ties.

Pre-requisites: attending our 101 session, or
- People tying: a solid single column of your choice. Some understanding of rope tension, listening and communication skills.
- People being tied: Good communication from inside rope, awareness of your boundaries.

There will be no 101 session this month, and one workshop will run throughout the day.

In this session we will look at incorporating bamboo into the harnesses we tie on the body and using them for partial and full suspension. Come and experiment with this versatile addition to your suspension kit - whether as an alternative upline attachment point, an interesting way to distribute weight, a tool for creating new shapes, or to add comfort or discomfort.

We will have some bamboo to borrow but do bring your own if you have it.

Pre-requisites:

People tying: Solid understanding of rope tension. Good rope handling, listening and communication skills. Knowledge of basic frictions.
People being tied: Excellent communication from inside rope, awareness of your boundaries, and self-advocacy. Ability to identify nerve and circulation issues and give feedback.

As this is a guest teacher session, we will not have a 101 workshop this month. One session will run all day, with breaks.

Mediations on Violence and Control: body manipulation and violence in rope

In this class Brig (a rope top, dominant sadist and ex philosophy student) through dialogue with Belial (a rough houser, dominant and philosophy nerd) investigate body manipulation - the fine art of moving people whether they want to move or not - while reflecting on the meaning on violence and control and how we can bring that to our rope scenes.

Prerequisites:

A solid single column
Some knowledge of the limits of your own body and an ability to communicate that.
A decent level of rope-handling

This is a Saturday Special event to make the most out of having our wonderful Scottish guests! There will be no 101 session, and one session will run all day, with breaks.

Please note that this event will not be taking place at Dance Studio Leeds. The venue will be announced to attendees a week before the event, but it is wheelchair accessible, less than half a mile from our usual studio, and there's street parking nearby. This venue can get quite hot in warm weather and ventilation is very limited - please plan accordingly. Any questions drop us a line.

Everything but the Steel Chair: Rope and Wrestling

This class is an on going dialogue between Belial (a very skilled grappler who doesn't understand rope) and Brig (an okay I guess grappler with a long love and history of rope). In this we will look at skills derived from BJJ and wrestling to take partners to the ground and keep them there while we tie them up. There will also be plenty of time for games.

Prerequisites:

A solid single column
Some knowledge of the limits of your own body and an ability to communicate that.
Some idea of rope-handling

Session 1: Intentional Tension & Rope 101

There will be two workshops running simultaneously, and it’s your choice which one you take part in.

Intentional Tension:

We talk a lot in the rope world about tying with tension, and in this session we’ll play with some exercises to help with this - can you tie fast with low tension, or slowly with high tension? How does tension maintain that physical connection between rigger and the person being tied while navigating technical hurdles?

Pre-requisites:
People tying: a solid single column of your choice, familiarity with half-hitches and munter hitches, good tension and rope handling.
People being tied: Good communication from inside rope, ability to identify nerve and circulation issues.

Rope 101

Our well known 101 sessions return to teach you rope handling, basic skills and communication. You'll leave this class being able to tie a body up and glean some starter tips on how to be tied.

This class is suitable for people brand new to rope, and those who've been to a 101 before but still have some more questions around the fundamentals. There'll definitely be something new for you to learn.

Why not come along and take your next step on your rope journey?

Pre-requisites: none

Session 2: Taking notes on rope

The process of learning is different for everybody. So what does it mean to reflect on your learning?
We'll explore ways for both riggers and bottoms of all levels to make notes on ties you want to learn, technical details, reflections on scenes, and everything in between. With a variety of techniques and stationary on offer, attendees will learn about how making diagrams can help understand ties, and how challenging the need to make your documentations aesthetically pleasing or "tidy" can help you get more out of note-taking.

Pre-requisites: none required, but some understanding of rope and communication, or having attended our 101, will be very beneficial.

Session 1: Drills for skills & Rope 101

There will be two workshops running simultaneously, and it’s your choice which one you take part in.

Drills for skills
Committing skills to muscle memory facilitates safety, smoother tying, and a more connective experience. This session will offer skill dense exercises we encourage you to regularly practice at home to boost your rigging practice, as well as built-in progression or stretch goals you can build towards.

Pre-requisites:
- People tying: a solid single column of your choice, familiarity with basic frictions, some understanding of tension and rope handling
- People being tied: Good communication from inside rope, ability to give feedback

Rope 101
Our well known 101 sessions return to teach you rope handling, basic skills and communication. You'll leave this class being able to tie a body up and glean some starter tips on how to be tied.

This class is suitable for people brand new to rope, and those who've been to a 101 before but still have some more questions around the fundamentals. There'll definitely be something new for you to learn.

Why not come along and take your next step on your rope journey?

Pre-requisites: none

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Session 2: Skills for labbing

Practice makes perfect - but how do we practice? In this all-levels session we will share techniques to get the most out of your labbing sessions, including having fun trying, testing and experimenting. Bottoms will learn how to be an active and integral part of the labbing process by identifying potential issues, listening to their bodies, giving useful feedback at the right time, coming up with suggestions and solutions to problems, and communicating verbally and nonverbally. Riggers will learn how to spot potential problems, approach them with curiosity, find creative solutions, respond well to feedback, accept getting things wrong, and communicate effectively.

Pre-requisites: attending our 101 session, or
- People tying: a solid single column of your choice. Some understanding of rope tension, listening and communication skills.
- People being tied: Good communication from inside rope, awareness of your boundaries.

To ensure everyone gets the most out of this session, the format will be different from our usual ROH crew-led lessons. There will be two sessions running alongside each other throughout the whole day, one for beginners and one for intermediate students.

When booking, please let us know by emailing ropeofficehours@gmail.com if you have any accessibility needs you need us to take into account.

We usually go out for a meal after each event. This month we will be going to Rosa's Thai in Leeds Trinity. It is wheelchair accessible and has vegan and gluten free options.

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Beginner Stream

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The beginners stream will open with our usual rope 101 syllabus, designed to teach you rope handling, basic skills and communication. You'll leave this part of the class being able to tie a body up and glean some starter tips on how to be tied.

This class is suitable for people brand new to rope, and those who've been to a 101 before but still have some more questions around the fundamentals.

In the second half of the session, the beginners stream will move onto learning some of the fundamental building blocks of suspensions by learning a simple hip harness, alongside learning flyline handling drills to build muscle memory and understanding on the ground, to make any future classes that include suspension skills less daunting. That said, suspension is edge play, and this part of the class is not intended to get beginners to rope suspending - but to give them the language and fundamentals they need to get the most out of future suspension classes.

Pre-requisites: none

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Intermediate Stream

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This class aims to take folks with a couple of decent harnesses in their repertoire, and either get them airborne for the first time, or build their confidence in the fundamentals of suspension to make the process smoother.

We will spend the first half of the class polishing and refining an upper-body harness and hip harness, running flyline drills, and attempting to take these two elements into a simple, static suspension. To ensure the class is safe and enjoyable for all attendees, we recognise that this goal can be extended to take the full runtime of the session.

For those comfortable with achieving a static suspension in the first half of the class, we’ll move onto the theory and practice of altering ties in mid-air: experimenting with how harnesses load differently as we alter the position of the body in the air; active bottoming skills that allow the bottom to intentionally pass weight to different parts of the tie; tips and techniques to aid confident, automatic flow when adjusting fly lines and adding single-column cuffs to suspension. The aim of this portion is achieving adjustable suspensions that can change to fit bottom’s feedback with minimal additional rope while already airborne.

Pre-requisites:
People tying: a solid single column of your choice, familiarity with half-hitches and munter hitches, good tension and rope handling, preferably a hip or chest harness that you have tied before.

People being tied: Good communication from inside rope, ability to identify nerve and circulation issues.

Session 1: Bamboo & Rope 101
There will be two workshops running simultaneously, and it’s your choice which one you take part in.

Bamboo

Adding straight lines to our rope play opens up many new ways of tying. We’ll cover ideas from the spreader bar, through to more free-form ways of integrating bamboo into your ties. Many of the tips for tying on humans won’t work well on the incompressible surface of wood, metal, or whatever solid bar you might be using, so we’ll be teaching the juggling act of moving from one to the other, and the joy of adding rigid structures that can fundamentally change what we can achieve with only a compressible medium like rope.

Pre-requisites:
==> People tying: a solid single column of your choice, familiarity with half-hitches and munter hitches, good tension and rope handling.
==> People being tied: Good communication from inside rope, ability to identify nerve and circulation issues.

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Rope 101

Our well known 101 sessions return to teach you rope handling, basic skills and communication. You'll leave this class being able to tie a body up and glean some starter tips on how to be tied.

This class is suitable for people brand new to rope, and those who've been to a 101 before but still have some more questions around the fundamentals. There'll definitely be something new for you to learn.

Why not come along and take your next step on your rope journey?

Pre-requisites: none

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Session 2: Open Shapes

Rope lends itself to compressing people into ball-like shapes, but with a little skill and attention we can create more open positions. This session will focus on the subtleties needed to open up the body and create novel shapes to use during our ties, shapes which lend themselves to vulnerability.

Pre-requisites: attending our 101 session, or
==> People tying: a solid single column of your choice. Some understanding of rope tension, listening and communication skills.
==> People being tied: Good communication from inside rope, awareness of your boundaries.