Creative Mayhem

Creative Mayhem is a rope teacher and rigger in Denver, Colorado, who ties primarily in a Japanese style. The presenter page of the Denver convention Rope in the Rockies says he has practiced shibari for more than fifteen years, cares about both the form and the function of rope, and has studied, presented and performed internationally.

Rope career and community building

Studio Friction class listings from 2020 and 2021 give more detail. According to his biography there, he has practiced Japanese-style rope bondage since 2008, including a period of study in Japan. He helped found Denver Rope Bite, a local rope group, in 2012, and in 2017 he helped build Studio Friction, the Denver rope studio where he has since taught. The same biography names Osada Steve, Barkas and the late Yukimura Haruki as his personal influences; it presents them as influences rather than as formal teachers. Studio Friction’s current committee list places him on the studio’s IT committee.

Teaching

In August 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he taught a virtual Rope 101 class for Studio Friction that covered single column ties, rope handling and safety before moving on to a calf binding, all of which could be practiced as self-ties by participants without a partner. In February 2021 he co-led a studio intensive with Avalanche on a transition sequence by Hajime Kinoko known as the Cyber-rope sequence, aimed at people already comfortable with suspension but new to transitions; the listing describes it as one of Kinoko’s more approachable sequences and meant as a spur to creativity.

For Rope in the Rockies he offers “Predicament Challenge!”, a hands-on lab open to all levels in which teams build predicaments that have to meet set conditions. Instead of teaching one or two specific ties, the workshop looks at what makes a predicament work and draws on suggestions from both tops and bottoms.