Paris

The Paris scene

Paris has had a dedicated rope school since 2010, when the École des Cordes was founded; it presents itself as the first French school devoted to kinbaku. Two of the area’s schools now teach in the line of Naka Akira, while other groups are run as volunteer associations. Paris was also one of the three cities, with London and Berlin, in Iris Carmina Ordean’s Durham doctoral thesis comparing rope bondage scenes, discussed in The contemporary scene.

The Naka line

Two of the area’s dedicated schools teach Naka-ryū. Alex DirtyVonP trained with Naka from 2013 to 2016 and took over the École des Cordes in 2016; the school now works from a studio in Joinville-le-Pont, just outside the city, and puts Naka-ryū at the center of its group classes, private lessons and workshops. DocVale opened Atelier Simonet in Aubervilliers in September 2018. It describes itself as an official Naka-ryū venue and also hosts teachers from many countries. The spread of Naka-line schools across Europe is told in Kinbaku in Europe.

Associations, queer spaces and other styles

Other groups are organized differently. Port d’attaches is a volunteer association whose experienced members take turns teaching. It runs a three-hour class on Friday evenings, a free-practice rope jam on most Sunday evenings, social evenings in a bar and public demonstrations followed by a group discussion, and it occasionally holds sessions reserved for a specific audience. La Cabäne, a small space in the 19th arrondissement run by the teacher Erato Bänana, says it puts queer and marginalized people first, though anyone is welcome who accepts its rule against intolerance. Corps à Cordes teaches both Japanese shibari and American bondage in weekly classes for groups of up to ten.

Rope in Paris is also performed. The second Paris Kinbaku Day, an afternoon of stage performances by French and international rope artists in a central Paris theater, is organized by Lalhow66 and the École des Cordes for November 2026. The city also has rope suppliers: Yunawa, which ships from Paris, calls itself the authorized importer of Ogawa jute rope.

What the city offers now

Visitors can find structured school curricula, association-run classes and jams, queer-led teaching, private lessons and occasional performance events. Most programs are published in French (Atelier Simonet and La Cabäne also have English pages), and some schools sit outside the city limits, so check each venue’s own page for where and in which language it teaches. For help choosing between lineage schools and open groups, see Choosing a teacher.