Pedro Cordas
Lisbon-based rope artist, performer and educator who began studying rope in Tokyo in 2003, took classes with Akechi Denki from 2004 and later with Nawashi Kanna, and has taught across Europe, North America and Australia.
Pedro Cordas is a rope artist, performer and educator based in Lisbon. Two published biographies, one on the rope news site ShibariNews and one on the guest-teacher page of Studio Kink in Sydney, are the main sources for his career; the Studio Kink page gives only his first name.
Training in Japan
Both biographies date the start of his rope practice to 2003 in Tokyo. ShibariNews adds that he was Osada Steve’s first student that year. In 2004 he began taking classes with the nawashi Akechi Denki, and after Akechi’s death in July 2005 he continued his studies with Nawashi Kanna, who was earlier known as Akechi Kanna. Studio Kink names both teachers as strong influences on his style. The same page says he has also met or learned from Yukimura Haruki, Nureki Chimuo, Naka Akira, Randa Mai, Miura Takumi and Hajime Kinoko, and that he returns to Japan regularly to study and research rope; ShibariNews mentions rope salons and art projects among the reasons for those trips.
According to both texts, he began looking more closely at the style taught by Naka Akira after a workshop he gave in Berlin in January 2014, and he has also studied a number of hojōjutsu patterns and their history.
Performance and film
He performs mainly in Portugal. The biographies list the London Festival of the Art of Japanese Bondage among his European appearances and Bondage Expo Dallas among his shows in the United States, and Studio Kink adds that he has performed in Japan. The line-up of Onawa Asobi Europe, the Antwerp edition of the Tokyo kinbaku performance festival, lists him, paired with Boshai from Belgium, among the performers of its 2024 edition.
ShibariNews also credits him as the filmmaker of Jyowa, subtitled “Rope Stories”, a documentary portrait of five Japanese rope artists. The Movie Database lists Jyowa as a 2015 documentary of about 110 minutes, says it began in Tokyo in 2011, and explains its title as a coined word combining the characters for rope and for communicating. That database credits the film to Pedro Diniz Reis and Daniel Costa Neves; neither source states whether Pedro Diniz Reis and Pedro Cordas are the same person.
Teaching
Studio Kink says he has taught for several years in Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. Both biographies describe his classes as ranging over many topics, from beginner to experienced level, adapted to the people in the room.