Bondage Soup Test Kitchen

About Test Kitchen

Bondage Soup Test Kitchen is a 6-month multidimensional program for experienced rope practitioners who are ready to explore what happens after they have built a strong foundation.

Test Kitchen is not graduate school or an advanced tier of Bondage Soup. It is another room in the same house, created for a different kind of learning.

Over 6 months, we will take familiar structures apart, look more closely at why they work, change variables, explore different approaches, and make intentional choices based on the people, bodies, environments, and experiences in front of us. The goal is to develop a deeper understanding of the rope you already know and become more confident using that knowledge in different ways.

This is where we experiment.

This is where we refine.

This is where we create.

This is where we solve problems.

Mission

The mission of Test Kitchen is to give experienced rope practitioners a structured place to question what they know, deepen their understanding, and explore different ways of using their skills.

The goal is not to find one way to tie. It is to understand our choices and know why we make them.

The Curriculum

Test Kitchen includes 5 months of multidimensional curriculum followed by a 6th month dedicated to graduation.

The 6-month Test Kitchen curriculum is:

Month 1: Observation and Feedback

Month 2: Takate Kote Deep Dive

Month 3: Tying in 3D and Working with Multiple Points

Month 4: Hashira

Month 5: Semenawa

Month 6: Graduation: Teach a Class

Each intensive gives us a different way to investigate rope and challenges us to use the foundation we already have in a different way.

Test Kitchen also encourages participants to look beyond the curriculum. Bring questions into the room, seek out other perspectives and approaches, investigate where your knowledge comes from, and be willing to discover that someone else has solved the same problem differently.

Tops remain in the tying role and bottoms remain in the being-tied role throughout the 6-month program. Test Kitchen does not allow partners to switch roles.

Both people in a partnership are active participants in the learning process. Tops and bottoms will be asked to observe, communicate, offer feedback, evaluate what happens, and contribute their own knowledge and experience. Test Kitchen treats both perspectives as essential to understanding whether something worked, what changed, and what the partnership might try next.

How We Learn

Test Kitchen is a structured, instructor-led program. Each intensive has a defined curriculum and learning objectives, and instructors are responsible for teaching and guiding the material.

Each intensive will also include demonstrations, guided exercises, experimentation, observation, discussion, troubleshooting, peer feedback, and time to explore different approaches.

Sometimes we will learn by watching an instructor demonstrate a concept. Sometimes we will learn by watching another tying partnership approach the same problem differently. Sometimes we will learn by trying something, discovering that it does not work as expected, and figuring out why.

Participants are encouraged to ask questions, compare approaches, test ideas, and share what they discover within the structure of each intensive. The goal is not for everyone to leave tying the same way. The goal is to understand more about the choices available to us, what those choices change, and how to make informed decisions for the people and circumstances in front of us.

Graduation

Test Kitchen graduation reflects the same spirit of exploration and sharing that happens throughout the 6 months.

Where Bondage Soup graduation asks participants to take what they have learned and create a performance, Test Kitchen graduation asks participants to take something they know and teach it.

Each participant will develop and teach a rope class. The class is an opportunity to investigate something more deeply, organize what you know, communicate it clearly, and share it with others.

About Bondage Soup

Bondage Soup gives you ingredients, patterns, tools, and a shared language. Test Kitchen gives you a place to experiment, refine, and discover what you can create. Soup Kitchen gives you a place to keep practicing, sharing, and learning alongside the community.

Test Kitchen remains rooted in the principles established in the Bondage Soup Recipe Book. Communication, consent, safety, technical proficiency, adaptability, accountability, creative expression, and learning from different bodies, partners, styles, and perspectives continue to shape how we work together.

Bondage Soup asks participants to learn patterns as taught while developing the proficiency necessary to eventually make informed adaptations. Test Kitchen creates a space to explore what those informed adaptations can look like.

Our Values

Curiosity

We are forever students. Curiosity means remaining open to what we do not know, regardless of how much experience we have. We ask questions, seek out perspectives beyond our own, examine where our knowledge comes from, and stay interested in how other people approach rope. Experience gives us knowledge, but it should never make us less willing to learn.

Adaptability

There is no single way to tie every person, create every experience, or solve every problem. We value having more than one approach available and understanding when and why to use it. Adaptability means being able to change structure, technique, position, pacing, or intention rather than expecting the rope, the person, or the situation to conform to one way of tying.

Community

Test Kitchen exists within the larger Bondage Soup community, our local rope community, and the broader rope community. We value being thoughtful and responsible members of those communities. Participants are expected to engage with others with respect, inclusion, consideration, and appropriate community etiquette. How we treat people, participate in shared spaces, and contribute to the communities around us matters.

Intentionality

Our choices have an impact beyond whether a tie works. We consider why we make the choices we make, how those choices affect the people we tie with, and how our actions affect the spaces and communities we participate in. Technical skill, communication, accountability, and care are all part of practicing rope with intention.

Expectations

Test Kitchen depends on the active participation of everyone in the cohort. Both people in each tying partnership are expected to arrive ready to learn, contribute, and take responsibility for their part in the learning process.

Show Up

Attend consistently and arrive prepared to participate. Consistent attendance allows each person to fully participate in the experiences, conversations, and work of the cohort.

Practice

Continue tying together outside of Test Kitchen. The work we begin in the room needs time, repetition, and exploration between intensives. Bring what you discover, including the things that did not work, back to the cohort.

Be Accountable

Remain accountable to yourself, your tying partner, and the cohort. Communicate clearly, respect boundaries, know your limits, take responsibility for your choices, and contribute to an environment where other people can learn.

Support the Cohort

Your participation affects the learning environment for everyone in the cohort. Support the people learning beside you, respect differences in bodies, identities, experiences, roles, and approaches, and contribute to a space where everyone has meaningful opportunities to participate and grow.

Price of Admission

We believe strong communities are built when people show up, participate, share knowledge, take responsibility for their actions, and contribute to something that matters to them. The Bondage Soup community is grounded in consent, accountability, inclusion, respect, and care.

We believe in sharing knowledge and experiences in ways that strengthen the community around us. We are willing to do the work if you are willing to do the work. In that spirit, Test Kitchen is offered at no financial cost.

The Bondage Soup Community

Graduates of Bondage Soup and graduates of Test Kitchen become part of the larger Bondage Soup community.

We are committed to a Bondage Soup community where different identities, bodies, abilities, backgrounds, experiences, roles, partnerships, and rope lineages are welcomed and respected. We recognize that people enter rope through different paths and participate in different ways. We work to reduce barriers, support meaningful participation, and create opportunities for people to learn, contribute, and bring their own knowledge and perspectives into the community.

Graduation is not the end of participation. Graduates are encouraged to continue practicing, sharing knowledge, learning, mentoring, attending Soup Kitchen, contributing to future cohorts, and bringing their own experiences and perspectives back into the community.

Bondage Soup builds the foundation. Test Kitchen gives us room to experiment, refine, and create. Soup Kitchen keeps us learning together.

Different paths. One community.

Applying to Test Kitchen

You do not need to have graduated from the 12-month Bondage Soup program to apply to Test Kitchen.

Test Kitchen is for experienced rope practitioners who have the technical foundation necessary to participate fully in the curriculum, regardless of where or how that foundation was developed.

Applicants apply as a tying partnership, and that partnership must have been tying together consistently for at least 6 months before applying.

Applications and Cohort Size

Test Kitchen accepts applications from up to 12 tying partnerships. From those applicants, 4 tying partnerships will be invited to join the 6-month Test Kitchen cohort.

The small cohort is intentional. Limiting the cohort to 4 tying partnerships gives everyone time and space to work, ask questions, try different approaches, troubleshoot problems, and receive individual attention throughout each intensive.

Technical proficiency is one part of the selection process. We also consider how each partnership communicates and works together, what they hope to explore, their willingness to give and receive feedback, how they engage with the local rope community, and their interest in contributing to the Bondage Soup community.

Final invitations are based on the complete application, proficiency demonstration, and interview.

The Application Process

1. Apply

Both people in the tying partnership apply to Test Kitchen. There is one application for the person tying and a separate application for the person being tied.

The applications give us an opportunity to learn about each person individually as well as the partnership you have built together. We want to understand your rope experience, your current practice, how you work together, and what each of you hopes to explore in Test Kitchen.

2. Show Proficiency

All applicants will complete a proficiency test as a tying partnership. You will demonstrate a repeatable suspension sequence that includes at least 3 distinctly different transition positions.

The proficiency test is not about whether you tie exactly the way we do in Bondage Soup. It is an opportunity for the partnership to demonstrate the foundational skills, understanding, communication, and experience needed to participate in Test Kitchen.

3. Interview

Applicants who demonstrate the required proficiency will be invited to interview. The interview gives us an opportunity to talk with both people about your experience, your partnership, your goals, how you learn and work together, and whether Test Kitchen is the right learning environment for you.

Completing the application process does not guarantee an invitation to join Test Kitchen. Bondage Soup graduates and applicants from outside the program go through the same selection process.

Program Timeline

Test Kitchen runs from February through July.

December: Applications

Applications open for tying partnerships interested in joining the upcoming Test Kitchen cohort.

January: Proficiency and Interviews

Applicants complete the required proficiency demonstration. Partnerships who demonstrate the required proficiency will be invited to interview.

Late January: Invitations

Invitations are offered to 4 tying partnerships.