Fred Hatt
London shibari educator and co-founder of Anatomie Studio, known for a technical teaching style and a preference for dynamic transitions and predicament rope.
Fred Hatt is a shibari educator in London and a co-founder and owner of Anatomie Studio. The studio’s history says he and Anna Bones met in London in 2013, began tying together and opened the studio in June 2015, first in their home and later in a railway arch in Peckham. The history presents Anatomie as a place to learn and practice Japanese-inspired rope bondage, and Anna Bones’s teacher biography calls it the UK’s largest and first full-time shibari space. Both founders, the history notes, are former academics.
Teaching
According to the studio’s team page, he has taught shibari for nearly ten years, in London and in other countries. His teacher biography says he leads classes for a wide range of levels at Anatomie and that he and Anna Bones also teach, and sometimes perform, outside the UK. Both texts say his classes deal with why a tie is done as well as how. They call his teaching technical and careful about the fine points that decide whether a tie succeeds, and the team page says he wants what he teaches to be easy to grasp and to use. The biography portrays him as an introverted, caring rigger who likes passing on what he knows to his partners and students.
Style
According to the same biographies, his own rope leans toward fast, dynamic transitions and predicament shibari. The studio’s team page names his work as one of the influences on another Anatomie teacher, who lists “modern approaches like Fred Hatt’s” alongside the traditional teaching of Naka Akira.
Discover Shibari
The studio credits him and Anna Bones with creating Discover Shibari, the four-course foundational series that Anatomie calls its signature program and says it has offered for ten years. The first course introduces single and double column ties and core ties such as the takate kote; later courses cover floor ties and partial suspensions, and the last is an intensive weekend on full suspensions and transitions. The studio calls its teaching practical and approachable, says every class is taught from both the rigging and the bottoming side with a focus on partnership, and states that instructors from its team teach the courses.