Mission Local
Danarama is a speech coach, of sorts. Here’s a sample piece of advice he gives his students:
“If you can practice every sentence so that your voice goes down, you’ll sound much more dominant, that has a very powerful effect on the person you’re playing with,” says Danarama.
When working with a scene partner, Danarama likes to put the onus on them to fill in the details. One of his favorite lines to motivate improvisation: “Give me three reasons why you deserved to be spanked.”
Danarama is not an improv coach nor speech pathologist. He’s a professional dominant, instructor, and director of BDSM porn purveyor Kink.com’s new educational wing, Kink University. To add to the roster of Folsom Street Fair festivities this weekend, Kink and its academics are hosting BondCon, a four day conferences for the BDSM community and its multifarious interests.
BondCon features 24 different workshops for the kinky and “kink curious.” The workshops, geared towards beginners and the advanced, include practicums and lectures, live demos and seminars, ropes, electrodes, whips, and even balloons.
“We have a class on balloon bondage which is very lighthearted,” said Kink spokesperson Mike Stabile. “It’s probably less intense for beginners than our workshop on grappling and take downs for BDSM.”
Many of the classes include instruction for specific techniques one might use in a BDSM “scene,” or encounter. There’s the basics like “Spanking 101” to the highly technical such as “Beauty in Rope: Weaving Diamond Ties.” Classes also delve into aspects of the Kink lifestyle like “Coming out Kinky,” “Threesome Tips,” and “More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory.”
The workshops will feature a few luminaries from the world of kink, including sex educator and author Midori and Takeshi Nagaike, one of forefathers of shibari, a highly stylized form of rope bondage from Japan.
“We just thought it would be a nice thing to offer, because so many people are coming to San Francisco just for Folsom Street,” said Danarama who is teaching a workshop on rough sex and one called “How to Talk Like a Top.”
“It’s the best time to have an open house of the Armory,” Danarama added, noting that in addition to the workshops BondCon will feature frequent tours of the Armory as well as parties in the famed moorish castle’s basement studios. Which, as Stabile notes will not be leaving the Mission for Nevada any time soon as we reported it might in April, the “condom law” AB 1576 has since stalled in the California Senate. Though Stabile says ominously: “we know there will be another one next year.”
For those who can’t make it to BondCon, there’s always the internet to learn from, and not just the online videos Kink is already well known for. Besides providing frequent live workshops, part of Kink University’s mission is to host a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). Since it launched six weeks, Kink University’s online curriculum offers a suite of in-depth instructional videos with step-by-step photo guides for the more technical skill sets. …