Masha
Montreal shibari teacher, rigger and model, also known as Katmiss, who has tied regularly since 2017 and co-owns the Tension studio, where her teaching centers on communication, consent and boundaries.
Masha is a shibari teacher, rigger, model and performer in Montreal and one of the owners of Tension, a rope studio on Rue Sainte-Catherine Est. Tension’s team page lists her under the name Katmiss with the roles owner, educator, rigger and model, and says she has tied regularly since 2017. The same page gives her profession as lingerie designer, and a 2020 MTL Blog report on how the studio reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic also named her as a lingerie designer and co-owner of Tension.
Role at Tension
Her biography on the studio’s website says that rope became a kind of language for her and that this path led her to Will (Willcat), with whom she later helped found the school. It calls her a co-founder of “Tension 2.0” and says she works there as a teacher, as a model and as the studio’s communications manager. A 2024 feature in the Montreal newspaper The Link, written around one of the studio’s shibari nights, named Willcat, Katmiss and Cwiss as Tension’s three owners and described what they offer: courses on tying and on communication, performance events and kinky craft fairs.
Approach
According to her biography, her tying is fluid and built on the exchange between partners, with the aim of creating trust and room to explore. She regards rope as a tool and puts communication and consent at the center of the practice, which she sees as a matter of listening, negotiating and building a genuine exchange. In teaching, she aims to pass on precise technique while leaving space for intuition and for the particular dynamic of each pair, with safety and respect as fixed priorities. The page stresses her wish that women and marginalized people in particular feel entitled to set boundaries and state their needs, and quotes her view that refusing is a strength and that respecting oneself can be learned. She hopes students leave the studio with technical skill and with a clearer sense of their own needs.
Performance
Besides teaching, she offers private performances, which the studio describes as combining aesthetics, complicity and intensity, and she takes part in stage performances, artistic collaborations and educational projects. The biography says her work draws on encounters and emotions and on a continuing effort to renew her relationship with rope.