Ep143: Rope Bottoming Education - What is it, and what could it be? An interview with fuoco (part 1)

fuoco began her rope journey as a bottom in Phoenix ten years ago
and shortly thereafter moved to London, where much of her early
rope learning happened. Upon moving back to the US, she began
presenting at cons and intensives around the country sharing her
love of rope. As an educator, she's decidedly non-dogmatic in her
approach to teaching. Her classes aim to help bottoms to better
understand their bodies in movement, and to offer riggers the
knowledge to adapt their tying to the unique needs of their
partners. When she’s not doing rope, fuoco is a professional
acrobat. Her dedicated study of the mechanics of the body make her
especially interested in developing more comprehensive education
for bottoms informed by these practices. She's also a leftist who
believes that kink is inherently political. She strives to bring
her politics, her values, and an accountability for those values
into her teaching spaces. Listen to this engaging discussion to
hear about: • How she discovered rope bondage • Her early
experiences in London and Berlin • Her contributions to the growth
of bottoming education • How her circus arts do - and don’t -
influence her rope • How the understanding of what a ‘valuable’
bottoming educator is has changed • The changes that have occurred
for her in the kind of rope she enjoys • Active bottoming and how
some of the ideas don’t really speak to the lived experience of
most bottoms - and why • Challenges she personally has faced as
part of the rope scene • The journey of being an unpartnered rope
bottoming educator • What possible futures of rope bottoming could
look like • How bottoming and rigging education classes might work
together more harmoniously • And much more