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on Wed 28 Sep 11, 12:34 AM to Tanos's blog.
Last month @mia and I went to the GLLA ("Great Lakes Leather Alliance") weekend in Indianapolis after our week in New York. GLLA is one of several regional leather conventions across that have M/s contests, and I blogged about this part last time. Now I'm going to write a bit about the workshops.
There were about forty workshops and sessions in various formats, usually with four or five running in parallel in different rooms. Overall there were almost 500 people at the event, and the workshops we went to varied from thirty people down to half a dozen.
For me, the last one was the best, and it was the Pony Play workshop given by submissann who started the Los Angeles Pony & Critter Club. First she delivered a very clear explanation of the basics of the different activities of pony play, from pony carting to ground work with long reins and disciplines like dressage. She demonstrated how simply you can put a rope harness together with her volunteer, Indybabygirl, and then some of the gaits and commands they'd be practicising that weekend. Above all she was upbeat and encouraging to people starting out, and stressed how little it can cost: harnesses and reins tied with rope, and tack, crops etc from equestrian shops. I'm always a fan of demystifying BDSM, and pony play is too often seen (or portrayed) as something inaccessible. submissann is also good "advert" for pony play in herself: she's someone you'd like to be like or to play with, and not at all like the kind of image you see on Channel 4 late-night, freak-show programmes like Eurotrash and its successors. Right at the end of the workshop we got on to the subject of venues for pony play, and I talked through the idea for an out of season indoor event, which has now developed into The Warehouse in Birmingham in November.
Another workshop that gave me lots of ideas was on
Abduction by Nullmoniker & Sysiphe. I've never done a
kidnapping scenario, although I've done some quick
takedowns as ways of starting scenes including ones
involving the
cell in my
cellars. Nullmoniker dived straight into the topic
with quite a lot of detail about different scenarios he'd
carried out, from takedowns in houses up to ones done on
the street into a van. He systematically covered pitfalls,
like legal situations in different states, and ways of ensuring
consent without spoiling the surprise when it's time.
Quite a lot of the workshop was taken up with a series of
practice takedowns involving volunteers, with Nullmoniker
and Sysiphe fielding questions at the same time to keep it
interesting for everyone else. Towards the end I was
definitely thinking about how I might be able to use
Bridgewood for this kind of scenario, either as somewhere
for people to be taken, or for people being abducted from
one location within the wood to another. Then a reference to
"taking them to a cabin in the woods or wherever"
really sealed it 
There was also an excellent talk about cuttings with Sir Top, who had a wonderfully businesslike approach to the subject. She finished with two permanent decorative cuttings, with the cuts inked to make them more visible.
In tone and style all of the GLLA workshops weren't that different to ones I've seen in the UK, which is quite a contrast to the very foreign feel of the contests I talked about last time.
Edited Wed 28 Sep 11, 7:43 AM by Tanos
