Houston

The Houston scene

The sources found for this guide describe Houston’s current rope programs rather than their history, and none of them traces classes or groups in the city further back. Texas has a longer convention record: ROPECRAFT lists editions in San Antonio in March 2018 and in Austin from 2016 on. How American rope grew from a few teachers into conventions and studios is told in Kinbaku in North America.

A graded curriculum

RPM Classes, short for Rav’s Progressive Method, sorts its teaching into four tiers. The first, Base Basics, is a safety class on the common risks of rope bondage and suspension, from nerves, joints and circulation to consent, negotiation and getting a bottom out of rope quickly. RPM makes it mandatory before any other class, holds it free on the first and third Mondays and also sells it as an online course that ends with a short quiz. From the Ground Up then covers more than fifty floor, furniture and bed ties, Sky’s the Limit takes students from beginner to advanced suspension in a progression modeled on martial-arts belts, and To Infinity and Beyond works on collaboration, improvisation and design. Students pick lessons from a menu and move at their own pace.

The classes take place in what RPM calls a learning lab and performance practice space, not a play space: a warehouse with soft floors and more than twelve hardpoints. On Thursdays, after the suspension class, the room stays open for Open Rope, a lab night with a small entry fee. Waivers and ID checks are required. The program says it welcomes LGBTQ+ people, women and minorities, and that it teaches tops, bottoms, self-tyers, spotters and photographers alike. Besides classes it lists demos, challenges, performances and monthly munches.

A studio, a nonprofit and an exhibition

Shibari Sessions is the studio of a Houston rope artist and educator who teaches private lessons for individuals, couples and groups in a home studio in the Heights and also ties for photo shoots. The same person runs Bound HTX, a nonprofit that the studio says helps Houston learn rope safely, and founded ShibARTi, a live-art exhibition that brings rope into a gallery setting.

The 2026 edition of ShibARTi, on 14 November, is presented by Shibari Sessions, Bound HTX and the Montrose Center, which hosts it. It is an adults-only evening of floor work without suspension, with about forty artists competing in solo and group categories. A panel of three judges scores composition, creativity, cultural impact and technique, and the evening raises support for the Montrose Center and Bound HTX. The Montrose Center is Houston’s LGBTQ community center; it was founded in 1978 as the Montrose Counseling Center and offers health, youth and senior services.

Finding your way in

The program websites are in English. At RPM a newcomer’s first step is a safety class rather than a jam, and the house rule that Base Basics comes first applies to everyone. For the difference between classes, labs and jams, see Rope jams, munches and salons; for what a first lesson usually involves, see What happens at a first shibari class.