Butterfly
Shibari teacher working under the name ButterflyBondage, whose own site dates the teaching to 2012, with workshops in Utrecht and line-up listings at the EURIX exchange in 2015, 2018 and 2022.
Butterfly teaches shibari, Japanese rope bondage, under the working name ButterflyBondage. The “About” page of the ButterflyBondage site dates the start of this teaching to 2012 and names three formats: group workshops, masterclasses and one-to-one lessons.
Teaching
Butterfly’s site gives the Netherlands as the teaching base, with Utrecht group classes, individual lessons in Amersfoort and teaching elsewhere in Europe. Butterfly says the teaching language depends on the participants and may be Dutch, English or Spanish. The site calls Butterfly an inclusive teacher and says each session begins with building a safer space together.
The about page lists safety, anatomy, communication, suspension, power dynamics, play, knots, friction, creativity, connection, intimacy and movement as subjects for workshops and private lessons. A further topic applies rope bondage to intimate, adult settings. The site also has a reviews page, where the first entry describes a Shibari Basics workshop and a teaching approach of demonstration followed by practice, with personal tips along the way; the page names “connective bondage” as the theme that the reviewer found most inspiring.
A Hipsy event page for a one-rope workshop in Utrecht on 8 September 2024, now marked as ended, offers a closer view of a workshop. The listing describes a single-rope workshop for beginners and experienced participants, with instruction planned in English or Dutch according to the group. The page says the focus is on the partner and the interaction between the two people rather than on elaborate knots or symmetrical ties. The same page shows Butterfly Bondage as the organizer account on Hipsy.
Training
The about page says Butterfly studied with roughly 40 teachers and traveled for shibari to Japan, Canada, England, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden. In Japan in 2012, the teachers named are Osada Steve, Nawashi Kanna (see Akechi Kanna), Haruki Yukimura (Yukimura Haruki), Saki Kamijo and Otonawa-san. Lessons in Europe, between 2011 and 2022, are mentioned without names.
Festivals
The archive of earlier editions on the EURIX page, the European Rigger and Model Exchange in Berlin, lists ButterflyBondage from the Netherlands in the line-up of the autumn 2015 edition, “Saara Rei & Butterfly” from Stockholm and Utrecht in the autumn 2018 edition, and ButterflyBondage from Utrecht in the autumn 2022 edition. Saara Rei has a separate page on this site.
Other
The about page also points to a podcast conversation in Dutch with Daphne Gakes, covering seduction, consent and bondage.