BDSM Classes in NYC
If you’ve ever had the right activities but the scene still fell flat, this is the missing layer. I teach the logic underneath BDSM: charge, tension, tone, and how power wants to move, so play stops being a performance and starts landing in the body. This is The Architecture of Erotic Power: not just what to do, but why a scene works and how to shape it with intention.
Current Classes and Events
- Fri Sep 25, 7:00 to 10:30 PM
Kurious: Where the Kinky Find Community
- Wed Oct 7
Discover Your BDSM Blueprint
About the Class Tickets Coming Soon
How the Classes Build on Each Other
This is the path through my BDSM development series, from understanding your ingredients, to developing the forces that shape play, to designing a signature scene, and eventually into immersive intensives that expand what becomes possible in BDSM. Your erotic patterning is intelligible, readable, workable, and usable once you have the language for it.
Mr. Anthony joins as an education co-facilitator on select classes.
- 01Foundations
- 02Forces of Desire
- 03Signature Scene
- 04Immersions
Foundations
Foundations is where you learn to build an experience, not just perform an activity. Blueprint gives you language for what you want a scene to do and how to communicate it.
About the ClassForces of Desire
Forces of Desire asks what gives that experience its charge. Polarity, chemistry, taboo, each force isolated so you can work with it deliberately, with more precision about what is actually making the scene work.
These three can be taken in any order. All three are required before The Signature Scene.
The Signature Scene
A signature scene is the one you’d stake your erotic reputation on, the scene that’s unmistakably yours. Not a menu of techniques, one scene made with real craft around tension, tone, and the movement of power.
Learn MoreImmersions
Some kinds of erotic exploration need more than a class, and more than a single scene. The Immersive is a 7 to 10 day deep dive into shadow material, altered states, and the archetypes that drive you.
Learn More
Discover Your BDSM Blueprint
Knowing how to use a flogger is not the same as knowing how to create a good scene. The same act can feel like punishment, challenge, teasing, surrender, or something else entirely. Blueprint helps you identify the experience you want and communicate it to the person you’re playing with.
Then we break down what creates that experience through Driver, Power Seat, Tension, Tone, and Zing: what pulls you in, how power moves, how charge builds, the emotional register you want, and the element that makes the scene feel unmistakably yours in actual play.
Blueprint is offered in two formats, one for individuals and one for couples who want to work with the material together. Each BDSM class is 90 minutes of instruction followed by 60 minutes of guided practice with a partner or fellow participant.
See What Makes a Scene Work.
Take the quiz and bring your results to class. It gives you a first look at what makes a scene work for you through your Tension, Tone, and Zing. Blueprint turns those results into language for what you want, how you want it to feel, and how to communicate that to the person you’re playing with.
Taken by 500+ people so far.
“I knew what I liked but I had no way to talk about it without feeling like I was oversharing or making it weird. Blueprint gave me actual words for things I’d only ever felt.”
“I thought I was the only person who wanted the things I wanted. Just being in a room with other people working through the same questions changed something.”
“I kept trying to explain what I wanted to partners and it never landed. Now I understand why, I was describing activities when what I actually wanted was a dynamic.”
Viktoria’s love of teaching started early, giving horse riding lessons at fifteen. Horse training carried her through her thirties. A decade in medical sales and leadership, where the real work was always education. And ten years as a professional Dominatrix, eight of those spent teaching BDSM directly through private mentorship, client sessions, and classes she’s hosted across New York City.
She’s the creator of The Architecture of Erotic Power, the framework behind these classes, built from what she’d been practicing for years.
She teaches from what she’s studied and what she’s lived. Her work is trauma-informed and somatically grounded, shaped by Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, and Brené Brown, alongside Tina Horn’s cultural work on power and desire. She’s a student of Mingyur Rinpoche in the Tibetan Buddhist and Tantric tradition, and holds a second bachelor’s in Psychology.
Recognition
NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study
Classes, dates, and waitlist openings.
New classes, dates, and waitlist openings. No spam.
About the BDSM Classes in NYC
Who are these BDSM classes for?
Anyone serious about getting better at this. Beginners, experienced players, singles, couples. You don’t need prior BDSM experience to start with Blueprint, the class is built to teach you the language from zero. The advanced BDSM classes and workshops assume you’ve done the foundations, either here or elsewhere.
Do I need a partner to attend?
No. Blueprint is offered in separate formats for individuals and couples. Most of the advanced BDSM classes and workshops in NYC are structured so you can attend alone; a few work better with a partner and will say so on the class page.
Where are the BDSM classes held in NYC?
In NYC, in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The location is given with each event. A few classes also run online for people outside NYC.
What does a BDSM class actually look like?
Ninety minutes of instruction followed by sixty minutes of guided practice with a partner or fellow participant. You learn the framework, how tension builds, what tone means, how power moves, and then put it in the body. Topics across the programme include anticipation, denial, push-pull, sensual and strict registers, devotion and ritual, and the dominance and submission styles that are actually yours. Not a lecture. Not a play party. A teaching environment with structured practice.
What’s the difference between Blueprint and the advanced BDSM classes?
Blueprint is the entry point. It teaches you to identify the experience you want a scene to create and gives you a framework for communicating it. The advanced BDSM classes, Forces of Desire, Signature Scene, and Immersions, go deeper into polarity, chemistry, taboo, the craft of building a single scene, and multi-day immersive intensives. All sit inside The Architecture of Erotic Power.
Who teaches the classes?
Viktoria Sway. A New York City professional Dominatrix known for focusing on the psychology of kink. Fifteen years in the lifestyle, ten of them as a professional, and the creator of The Architecture of Erotic Power, her four-level BDSM curriculum.
How do consent and safety work in class?
Clear conduct guidelines are shared at enrollment. Practice partners are chosen deliberately; no one is assigned to intimate contact without explicit opt-in. These are teaching environments, not play parties, and the structure reflects that. Anyone uncomfortable with an exercise sits it out, no explanation needed.
How do I stay informed about new BDSM classes and workshop dates?
Join the class list above. You’ll get notice on new BDSM classes in NYC, workshop dates, and waitlist openings. Or take the Blueprint Quiz, everyone who takes the quiz gets class updates.