Gandalf
Shibari artist and educator described by Karada House as based in Shanghai, who founded the Embodied Flow community, teaches a theater-and-dance-influenced curriculum and started the Kinbaku Theatre performance initiative.
Gandalf teaches shibari and works as a rope artist. Karada House describes Gandalf as a rope artist based in Shanghai, China.
Community and platforms
According to Karada House, Gandalf organizes Embodied Flow, a local community in which rope meets other art forms. The Queerope 2022 line-up page adds that Gandalf started a body art platform called KinkyFeminist, which aims to broaden who gets rope education and to build safer spaces for practitioners. The Shibari Study Podcast introduces Gandalf as the founder and organizer of Embodied Flow, and as someone who leads a Playback Theatre group locally. It also says Gandalf’s writings and talks have been featured by TEDx, DOMUS China and Contemporary Queer Chinese Art.
Teaching
Karada House says Gandalf offers rope classes to non-specialist audiences as a way to open conversations about care, gender, power and being together. The curriculum, named 心意 on the same page, is heavily influenced by theater and dance, and it is meant to help practitioners work out their own way of tying. On the podcast, the workshops are described as mixing movement and rope exercises, with topics from consent and safety to vulnerability.
Karada House lists Gandalf as facilitator of two sessions at Queerope 2023: a beginner workshop called Touch, dated 13 September 2023, which combines movement, the fundamentals of shibari and the sense of touch, and a discussion session called Kinky Entanglements, dated 16 September 2023, built around writing and poetry exercises on the variety of kinks. The Queerope 2022 line-up page also lists Gandalf.
Kinbaku Theatre
Gandalf also started an initiative called Kinbaku Theatre, which Karada House describes as a way of stretching what rope performance can be. The Queerope 2022 page explains the format: each group consists of 20 newcomers to tying who build a stage performance during a 12-hour intensive of tying and movement. It names four earlier works from 2021: The Space Between Us, Departures, Becoming, and All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone.