Rope Tales

Kinbaku: a challenge for the body, a shiver for the mind

Shibari and kinbaku videos

This archive brings together Rope Tales shibari and kinbaku videos: live performances, studio sessions and trailers featuring Kirigami, Tenshiko and other performers. The works vary in atmosphere and intensity, while sharing a focus on the relationship between the people involved. Choose a thumbnail to watch a video and discover the context in which it was made.

What you’ll find in the archive

The collection spans different stages of Kirigami and Tenshiko’s work and their collaborations with other artists, from early videos to later encounters between the same performers. Meeting again after time apart brings a different sense of familiarity to the rope, new possibilities and a desire to explore them together. Alongside the character of each performance, the videos also record that shared journey.

The footage includes floor work and suspensions, using bamboo, hashira and other elements. On stage and in the studio, the work moves between physically demanding passages and moments of intimacy, anticipation and closeness.

Almost all the videos are excerpts from live performances. If you’d like to follow the performances beyond the trailers, full recordings can be purchased as add-ons alongside tickets for our live streams. You’ll find the available options in the online events section.

Each video has its own page with information about the performers, the occasion on which it was filmed and, where available, video credits. Some performances have explicit and censored versions, identified in their respective titles.

The archive documents shibari as a performance practice. These videos show the work of experienced people; they are not technical lessons or instructions for recreating the ties or suspensions.