Sai Jaiden Lillith
Melbourne- and Sydney-based rigger, educator and performer who began shibari in the mid-2010s, co-founded the ritual performance collective Infernal Desire Machine and the workshop collective Sacred Primal Arts with Eve X, and teaches rope intensives through the Australian School of Sexuality.
Sai Jaiden Lillith is a shibari practitioner, educator, performer and event organizer who works between Melbourne and Sydney. Their own site lists Japanese rope bondage, from floor work to full suspension, as one of their core specializations, and the Australian School of Sexuality describes them as gender fluid and based in Melbourne.
Rope background
The dates given differ slightly by source: the Australian School of Sexuality says Sai has practiced shibari since 2016, while Sai’s own shibari page dates the start to 2017 and says it began on the receiving side of the rope, with a full suspension. That page names the rope teachers and schools Sai has trained with as Sydney Rope Dojo, Studio Kink, Nawashi Kanna (Akechi Kanna), Osada Steve, Yagami Ren, Precipice Malum and Hajime Kinoko. Sai frames the approach as resting on artistry, intention and connection with close attention to safety, and cites spiritual and magical practice, the performing arts and ordeal-based rope, which Sai calls “beautiful suffering,” as influences. An Australian School of Sexuality workshop listing calls Sai one of the fastest riggers around and says they have performed hundreds of times.
Teaching
Sai teaches group and one-to-one classes and offers private lessons; the site presents a calm, patient teaching style. Through the Australian School of Sexuality, an education project created by Eve X, Sai has taught rope at its ASSFest weekends in Sydney and Melbourne, including a rope and power workshop in April 2024, and led THE ROPES – Speed | Feel | Flow, a one-day Sydney intensive in three modules: drills for flow and tying speed, a partnered session on rope vocabulary and connection, and one on movement and dynamism. Sai has also presented workshops at OzKinkFest and Sexpo, and serves as second-in-command of the Australian School of Sexuality. With Eve X, Sai founded Sacred Primal Arts, a circle-based, non-hierarchical collective that runs open workshops on BDSM, sexuality and embodiment.
Performance
Sai’s site says they have created rope rituals and live shibari performances since 2018. In 2020 Sai and Eve X founded Infernal Desire Machine, a ritual performance collective whose work the site sums up as traditional shibari with a punk aesthetic, mixing rope with performance art, dance and live music. The collective has performed at ASSFest, including the festival’s opening night in April 2024, and in the Flesh Rituals & Siren Songs series with the industrial band ZCluster, in which Sai sings, often while suspended in rope. Sai also runs the production company The Soft Machine, which stages events combining live music, BDSM and erotic circus.