It Started As a Perfectly Innocent Dance Teaching System...then it SPAWNED.
It Started As a Perfectly Innocent Dance Teaching System...then it SPAWNED.
What exactly IS The System in Izzy Alchemist's Lab?
It Started As a Perfectly Innocent Dance Teaching System...then it SPAWNED.
…Once upon a time I got overwhelmed. I couldn't maintain all my weekly local dance classes while also touring internationally on TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), so I had to find a way to bridge the gap between monkey-see-monkey-do basic technique and teaching my students the deeper arts of Dance. I'd always done this by delivering a wide variety of choreographies, then putting it all together in guided exercises for learning how to make their own dances. But once I had to switch to workshops and short, sporadic class series between travel gigs, I had no idea how to convey all this...this...
What I Do as a dancer.
So in 2010, the Dance of Elemental Alchemy was born.
~Excerpt from:
For five years I used Dancing the Elements in all my local classes and private lessons, as well as offering workshops on it both domestically and abroad. It is quite the chameleon…changing hue depending on who is using it and where we are. It even changes every time the same people use it at a different time in their lives—or each time I use it myself.
In 2012, I started having seizures again.
By 2013, they got so bad that I had to move from my beloved hub in Colorado to Arkansas where my parents could help me because I was also in the middle of a divorce. When the seizures reached the point of daily, my life basically stopped.While convalescing in a townhouse built upon the side of a woodland ravine in the Ozarks, surrounded for the first time in 17 years by temperate forests, rivers, lakes, streams, ponds, waterfalls, this lush, green landscape worked magic on me.
“But…but seriously? Arkansas?! Ew, it’s so humid there!”
Yes. For me, it blessedly is.
“But…but Colorado!!!!”
Yes. Colorado. Grand pine and aspen forests. Jaw-dropping cliffs. Alpine wonder. The Majesty of the Rocky Mountains.
If you think I could afford to live ensconced within all that? Bwahahahahahah! Most people forget that the Rockies are merely a strip—and an expensive strip at that. The greater part of Colorado is basically a broad, dry expanse of Western Kansas and the brown, arid stretch of Northern New Mexico. (Oh yeah, and the underrated Western Slope.) For most of my time there, I lived in Pueblo - the unappreciated love-child of Mother Colorado and - well, we’re not sure who knocked Her up. New Mexico or Kansas.
Additionally, for me Colorado meant severe allergies and altitude which, after my big car wreck in 2000, also meant asthma. We’re not sure if it was the damage to my brain or my diaphragm and ribcage that caused it. Either way, it was sometimes debilitating.
Especially for a dancer and martial artist.
So moving to Arkansas was pure biological bliss. Until that move, I hadn’t realized that I’d shriveled up into a desiccated husk of myself - physically, emotionally, and creatively. Moving to the Ozarks changed everything.
The nourishing beauty that surrounded me…the healing reconnection with my parents…a new lighter, more spiritual form of martial arts with a renowned Grand Master…my introduction to one of the world’s premier havens of Art & Nature - Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
- all of that fused into one great, lotus-blooming pond of relief. Then it latched onto the Elements System I was constantly using in dance and meditation—honestly, that I was clinging to for my sanity.At that point, the Elements took over my life.
THE HARTEBEAST SYSTEM ©️2015
Pronounced “Heart…a beast”
Because my mom and I are punny gals. Wut? My last name is Hart, I’m a martial artist, and my nicknames are both Bella and The Beastie. We’re bummed that I keep having to explain it, and people get all scared off by “beast.” Whatever. It’s trademarked, so it is what it is. We think it’s fun, so there.
The System is my whole-life practice for balancing health, work, passions, connections...internal and external life...the things I want to do vs. the things I need to do in order to be my best self and enjoy my life.
In the circle graph below, we begin at EARTH and progress clockwise. Each Element builds upon the foundation of the ones before. Once completed with METAL, we have the full 5 ELEMENT ALCHEMY, and then the cycle begins again, going deeper with each revolution.
I don’t mind if you screenshot these things for your own reference, or even if you share them with others. Just please properly attribute their creator: Isidora Hart. And if you do share them with friends you think would like this System, then by all means, encourage them to come play with us here!
"The System" is so named because, when I started to make sense of how I was using it beyond dance, I began trying to map it out into these circle graphs, which was quite the ridiculous project at first. It has always reminded me of a little elemental solar system with five planets and a gazillion moons, all revolving around ALCHEMY.
This is the initial simplified map:
PLEASE DON’T FEEL OVERWHELMED.
This is just a quick overview. Deciphering that graph is why why we have an entire Stack dedicated to it, as well as the fun little tools, toys and tidbits I will be posting in Notes as we work our way through each position of the Elements.
These circle graphs will make much more sense if you've gone through Dancing the Elements with me. If you haven’t, that’s okay. Stick around. Subscribe. Because we’re going to start at EARTH and work/play our way around.
To begin understanding what you’re looking at in that solar system graph, the five satellite positions orbit around each Element in the same circular and cyclical pattern as the initial 5 Elements graph we started with:
Earth: Primary Body Parts of the Element
Air: Energetic or Spiritual Essence of the Element
Fire: Emotional Components of the Element
Water: Creed or Mental Focus of the Element
Metal: Primary Modality of the Element
For example:
Start with the green satellite on the very bottom. "Flesh & Bone" is in the Earth position of the Earth Element—the Body position of the Body-based element of Earth.* Earth’s Spiritual Essence (the Air position) is “Rooted/Grounded/Stable.” Its Modality (Metal position) is Dance.
"Breath & Energy/Chi/Aura" is in the Body position of the Air Element. Its Emotions (Fire) are “Apathetic vs. Inspired.” Its Modality is “Magic & Muse”
Because Fire is the home of Emotion, its Creed (the Water position) is “Feel/Express/Ignite.” In dance, Fire’s movement pattern initiates from the core and either radiates, flickers, or explodes outward. Hence why blood is included in Fire’s body position, along with the heart, guts, sexual center, and other organs.*
“Tears/Nerves/Sweat” is the Body component of the Water Element, whereas “Grief vs. Joy” is its Emotion. Because Water is the Mental element, its Creed or Mental Focus is “Know/Cleanse/Flow.”
“Protect/Connect/Value” is the Creed of the Metal Element, whereas its Modality (Metal position) is “Martial Meditation & Movement.” Its Emotion is “Anger vs. Bravery.” In other words, Anger which shows me where my boundaries are being crossed, and the Bravery to do something about it.
Each element and each position in the satellites build upon the ones that came before.
*MAKE IT YOUR OWN
Each of these elements and their satellites can be further broken down. For example, in the Body position, the fingers of the hand or each organ can be designated with an individual element. The ones I have chosen are unique to me, because I’ve studied elemental systems from all over the globe.
I’m a fusion artist at heart. Always have been. It’s very difficult for me to settle on One Twue Way of doing anything, except for the way that feels right to me right now.
Absorb what is useful
Discard what is not
Add what is uniquely your own.
~Bruce Lee
Many of the systems I’ve studied break down the Elements into four. Some use seven and correspond to the chakras. Others use a different five from mine. While developing this system, I experimented with all of them. I changed them around multiple times before finally settling on the System I’m sharing with you now.
I invite you to do the same if you prefer, especially if you are already devoted to an Elemental tradition.
Remember that my System was initially based on dance—how each of these energies moves in the body according to the inspiration of the music: where the energy initiates from…the pathways it takes…its destination…the qualities it embodies as it travels.
It was only later that I started using it for meditation, healing, etc. Hence why I don’t divvy my elements up according to things like Chinese or Ayurvedic Medicine. I have cherry-picked both of these practices, just like the meditational and spiritual imagery I was gifted from a Hopi Medicine Man, a Wiccan High Priestess, a guru of The Goddess, my Catholic roots, geeking out with my chemist and engineering bestie, a Universal Church minister, and my students’ relationship to these elements that they shared in and out of class.
From there, I answered the gut-thuds or hair-raised zinging I felt when everything clicked into a great, resounding “YES. That’s it.”
So the exercises and tools I will share are merely prompts. Use them as I do if you’re so inspired or if this is all new to you. Or feel free to assign different emotions or creeds to any element you like. Heck, you can even change the domains that the Elements govern.
For example, some people prefer to think of Fire as the Domain of Mind, whereas Water is the Domain of Emotion. Others liken Spirit to Water or to Fire. Some people don’t like segregating Earth and Metal, others think of Wood as its own element, or they consider Spirit as an element unto itself. Still others think of Earth as THE Earth - the combination of all the elements. In this way, THE Earth is what I have called Alchemy and I definitely picture our planet, as well as our place in space.
Once you start playing with this stuff
IT’S YOUR SYSTEM.
Not mine.
This is just what works best for me.
One of my eternal Muses whose music was instrumental (badum-tss) amidst the formation of my Elements System’s imagery, movement and dance vocabulary. We dance to The Stirling One a lot around here. In the kitchen, in the studio, at the stoplight, nekkid in the bathroom fresh out of the shower, and of course, onstage. If you don’t know this revolutionary artist and innovator…check her out!
UP NEXT: Tools & Toys - putting The System into practice
So what do you think? Do you already practice/play with an Elemental System? If so, which one(s) and how do they divvy this stuff up?
If you want to know about things like those chronic seizures, divorces, and my cross-country moves, you’ll have to head over to the other Stack: Bella & the Beast. Be warned, that’s where all the NSFW and 18+ stuff is, including my steamy, gory fiction. MUAhahaha…