Willcat
Co-owner and educator at the Montreal rope studio Tension, tying since 2015, who teaches a component-based method modeled on martial-arts training, has written a book for the studio's course and was the rigger in a shibari scene of Denis Côté's 2022 film That Kind of Summer.
Willcat is a rope educator, rigger and model in Montreal and a co-owner of Tension, a studio for shibari education and practice. Willcat uses they/them or she/her pronouns. Tension’s team page and Willcat’s own biography on the studio site are the main sources, with one press report on film work.
Path into rope
According to Tension’s team page, Willcat came into rope in 2014 and has been tying since 2015, bringing a background in corporate management and teaching to the studio. Their biography mentions years of technical writing and says their interest lies in both the technical and the emotional sides of shibari.
Teaching method
The biography is explicit about lineage: Willcat’s style draws on many others and is strongly rooted in some, but the page states that no Japanese rope school has formally recognized or licensed them as a teacher of its style, and they describe themselves as having no dedicated sensei, which they see as leaving them free of attachment to one approach. Their teaching is built from components, a technical training method modeled on martial arts and designed with safer practice in mind, especially for Western students; the biography acknowledges that this cuts against some traditional tendencies while trying to integrate them. It characterizes their rope as intense and risk-taking while staying exact and built on movement, and frames the aim of teaching as a grounded setting in which students find their own path, or dō.
Willcat has also written a book tied to Tension’s first class, which the biography presents as a technical course that prepares students for teaching methods rarely discussed in beginner classes. According to the same page, the book is sold in several formats and adds material the class does not cover; the site does not give its title or publisher.
Film and media
Willcat’s biography says they were the rope professional in a Québec feature by Denis Côté, Un été comme ça (That Kind of Summer), which was shown in competition at the 2022 Berlinale. A September 2022 article by Cédric Trahan in the Montreal publication Les 3 sex* reports that the film’s shibari scene was shot at Tension, that the studio’s rigger appears briefly in it, and that the rigger pushed for an aftercare scene to follow the tying, to counter the idea that bondage objectifies the person tied. The biography also lists interviews and tying demonstrations for the programs Au-delà du sexe and Sexe oral.