Dance. Story. History—mine and that of the dancers, artists, entertainers and characters who made me.
Since Substack wasn’t designed for those of us who write serial fiction or other long-form series, we jerry-rig the threads of our interwoven tapestries in navigation posts like this one, for your ease. I recommend bookmarking this page. Because my stuff really is meant to be read more like a choose-your-own-adventure book, rather than as individual unrelated articles.
You can also track your reading progress with the app’s nifty e-reader.
An important note: In this Table of Contents, I will be including any dancealicious deviations that I’ve embarked upon over in my memoir publication, Bella & the Beast. Be warned. There be Beasties over yonder, and we sometimes delve into NSFW waters.
My dance journey is one of the things that has been instrumental in my greatest healing, and that healing sets the rhythms of my dance. All my arts, really. Plus, I fuse my martial training and the variety of storytelling forms I pursue into my dancing all the time.
That’s why I have segregated these two publications, so those of you who want to stay with me in this bright, shiny lagoon of art & nature can snorkel and splash to your heart’s delight here in Tinkerings.
Whereas, those who prefer things full-spectrum and uncensored can dive as deeply as you wish in your quest to discover the answers to those most frequently asked questions: “How did you learn to dance the way you do?” and “Where did your dance style come from?” and “How can I dance like you do?” Because it often isn’t dance lessons that taught me the things that drop people’s jaws, bring them to ecstatic tears, or propel them onto their feet in standing ovations. (*deep bow*)
It’s my life.
Dance is merely one of the biggest ways in which I navigate it and express what I’ve experienced.
You’ll know which seas we’re sailing by the symbol that bullet-lists each episode:
✨ Tinkerings of an Elemental Alchemist (SFW)
👹 Bella & the Beast (potentially NSFW)
This page will be updated as I get all the episodes migrated from Ye Olde Blog, and start in on the stuff I never got to share before moving to Substack. (Any posts that don’t yet have active links are the ones that I’m still working on migrating. Think of them as teasers, yarrrr!)
Ahoy! And welcome aboard.
FAQs & INTROS
✨ DANCESTORY - FAQs: Origins & Evolutions
✨ WELCOME TO THE PLAYGROUND - Careful. We artists can be dangerous. And healing.
👹 DAMSEL TO DANGEROUS: For decades, people have been telling me that I’ll never be a professional dancer again, due to the injuries and assaults I’ve suffered. My response: WATCH ME. 🔥⚔️🔥
✨ DANCES WITH SWORDS: TIPS & TECHNIQUES - Safety, advice, musicality & artistry while wielding dance swords.
👹 DANCES WITH SWORDS - FAQs: The lineage of my swords, wielding them, and their place in my dancing.
👹 Dance, storytelling & martial arts have literally saved my life. The interweaving of these passions with art & nature are what has made me who I am. These two videos are an introduction and overview of the kinds of tales that lie within:
✨ ME & MY BIG SKIRTS - FAQs: Ruffles & Ripples & Spouts, oh my!
✨ IT STARTED AS A PERFECTLY INNOCENT DANCE TEACHING SYSTEM. THEN IT SPAWNED - What exactly IS the 5 Elements System in the Alchemist’s Lab? Here’s your gateway.
👹 DRAWING ROOM - how dancing the shapes of circles and infinities transforms my life.
THE BASE FOUNDATION
✨ THE LURE OF BELLY DANCE - At 19 years old in 1992, I get cast as a “Polynesian Dancer” for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and discover my life’s career. I bleep you not. A Shakespearean play. With Polynesian dancers.
✨ SOLID GOLD DANCER, BABY! - A dance-nerd is born! In the ‘70s, can you dig it?
✨ THAT ONE TIME I WAS RAD - Because yes, this nerd can dance. Back to the ‘80s, dude.
👹 INFILTRATING THE BASE - How the rebel-reject accidentally became a cheerleader.
MY COLLEGIATE TRAINING
✨ UGLY DUCKLINGS, SWANS & BIRDS OF DIFFERENT FEATHERS - BellaDancer takes Ballet — finds skirt dancers, Isis wings & Loie Fuller instead.
✨ IZZY & ISADORA - DUNCAN THAT IS - one of my most inspirational dance she-roes who helped pioneer Modern Dance
✨ *ALSO* A BELLY DANCER: JAZZ DANCE - “She’s not a reeeeal belly dancer. There’s more Jazz in her than anything.” Let’s analyze this.
✨ IN SEARCH OF MISSING BLACK MUSES - The shock of learning just how much was omitted from my earliest dance history instruction.
✨ BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, SILLY, SAVVY - In search of The Shimmy’s roots, I discover Josephine Baker. Theater meets dance. Theater was my original major, after all.
✨ CHAIN BREAKER, TREND MAKER, MIND WAKER - Falling in love with La Baker
✨ FROM SHIM-SHAM TO SHIMMY - The threads of Tap and Swing Dance in my (and others’) belly dancing
✨ THREE GRACES, MANY MUSES: RELAX, BREATHE, FLOW & PLAY - More lessons from Isadora Duncan, and from my cherished students.
👹 DELECTABLE GRAPE JELLY - That awful day when we had to dance inside those Graham-inspired, stretch-knit, purple sacks.
👹 IN THE FISHBOWL - Inside that awful purple sack, my meticulously fortified dam breaks, spilling All The ME onto the stage. In public.
MARY WIGMAN & EXPRESSIONIST DANCE:
✨ AN EXPRESSION, A SPEAKING OUT - Another of my Early Modern Dance great-grandmothers, and one of the pioneers of Dance Therapy.
✨ SECRETS THAT LIE HIDDEN - When it’s too dangerous to speak the words, that’s why we have dance.
✨ LETTING THE RIVER FLOW - After choke-chaining myself for too long in the wake of attack and censorship, I finally let it all come out. And not only through the silent expression of dance.
✨ THE HUMAN HAND CAN ACTUALLY BLOOM - After years of estrangement, my first belly dance teacher is blown away by all these hands movements she never taught me. Some of them? Nobody else had either. Or…at least…nobody currently in a body…
👹 DRAMA QUEEN - In the wake of predatory violence, I am left incapable of playing The Game for my Theater Major. Or…functioning.
👹 DRAMA QUEEN 2 - I bail on my Theater Major, but learn a crucial key to great acting. And self-protection.
BABY BELLY DANCER
✨ BABY BELLY DANCER - My first belly dance class: sparkly version.
👹 THE UNCENSORED VERSION - how my discovery of belly dancing literally saved my life. But in order for that to make sense, we need to go back into some of the deepest, darkest waters in my history. No muck: no lotus.
👹 DYE JOB 1: PINK, GOLD, BERRY BLUSH - I discover the Stairway To Heaven in my freshman dorm room.
👹 DYE JOB 2: PAINT IT BLACK - When everything changed in my freshman year of college.
👹 DYE JOB 3: WINE, BLOOD-RED, TEAL - Darker still. A jock-walking tomboy experiments with femininity. Just don’t drink the wine, Star. Because this Lost Boy is a blood-sucking creature of the night, and he’ll turn you into one, too.
👹 DYE JOB 4: PURPLE, BLACK & BLUE - How a coin & fringed bra saved my life.
👹 BABY BELLADANCER - My first belly dance class uncensored. The truth of why it was so crucial and revolutionary in my life.
✨ A TOMBOY’S MOST TENTATIVE SPARKLE - My first belly dance costume
✨ IRON WILL: THE MOVIE I WAS ALMOST IN - I become a pro belly dancer instead.
👹 BELLY DANCERS SHOULD BE 🔥HAWT!🔥 (don’t you DARE be too hawt.) - I lose my teacher just when I need her most and become that most dastardly of dancers: the 8-week wonder.
👹 🔥HAWT!🔥 PART 2: KISMET - I‘m destined to become a dance innovator—by necessity, not by my original choice.
👹 THAT TIME I BELLY DANCED FOR MACAULAY CULKIN - Right after he got dropped off a cliff.
✨ MAYA: DANCE, DRUMS, DREAMS - I discover Medieval reenactment through the Society of Creative Anachronism, and embark upon my first time dancing around a bonfire beneath the stars with bare feet on the ground and the wind in my hair. (I also start fighting in armor and acquire my first dance sword.)
👹 BONFIRE MEETS SHADOW - a dance of enticement around the fire
👹 BELLY DANCERS: 🐍luts, Priestesses, H😱🤩chies & G😈ddesses - the seedy, weedy side of being a belly dancer
HEROES, SHE-ROES, VILLAINS & SIDECHICKS
✨ ORIENTALIST DREAMS - Following in the footsteps of Ruth St. Denis
✨ THE ORIENTALISTS: ORIGINS & INSPIRATIONS - What IS Orientalism? And how it impacted my dancing.
👹 THE GREAT WHITE BELLY DANCER WAR OF 2014 - And how it finally finished off my career.
✨ THE CHARACTERS WHO MADE ME - My most inspiring heroes, she-roes, and some…ahem…protagonists of questionable morals
✨ VILLAINS & SIDECHICKS - The other characters who made me
✨ MATA HARI: DANCER, COURTESAN, TEMPTRESS, SPY - Also Wife. Mother. Battered Woman. Divorcee when you just didn’t do that.
✨ PASSION *IS* PRAYER - Veronica Franco, Ishmael, and the Roots of Eve-il
✨ SALOME: DANCE OF THE 7 VEILS - Strippers & Satins & Silks, oh my!
✨ SALOME 2 - Vicious temptress! Uh…ancient Shirley Temple?
✨ CLEOPATRA’S ROSE - Learning to dance and battle my way back like the nearly-nekkid, dethroned, exiled Queen of the Nile
✨ DESCENT TO THE UNDERWORLD - That Inanna & Ereshkigal duet I did with the inestimable Ariellah
BEYOND BELLY DANCING: BECOMING BELLADANCER
👹 SURRENDERING TO NOAH’S ARC - the most valuable lesson I learned while revisiting Swing Dance—relax, surrender, flow.
👹 ENTER THE DOJO - How a dance extravaganza’s body painting fiasco finally led me to study martial arts.
✨ MUTTS, HACKS & BASTARDS: The Creative Brain and being an innovator
✨ SPANISH FLARE - The Fire Sign finally gets to study Flamenco and Mexican Folklorico.
✨ DANCE WITH YOUR BODY, NOT YOUR FACE! - My ecstatic relief upon discovering the Bollywood sensation, Mahduri Dixit, Queen of the Facial Expression.
✨ THE MUSE IN THE MOON - My journey with Lindsey Stirling
TRAVEL, TRIALS, TRAVAILS, TRIUMPHS
A bunch of these tales are pretty much why I created the lair of Bella & the Beast.
👹 My decades living with Traumatic Brain Injury
👹 Being (unknowingly) neuro-spicy in the entertainment industry
👹 Recovery after a host of bodily injuries
👹 Adventures traveling the world to perform and teach dance
👹 The steamier side of my belly dance adventures off the stage
👹 The seedier side of being a professional belly dancer
You can find the comprehensive Table of Contents - no muzzle, no choke-chain - over here:
Have a request for something you always wanted to know more about in my dance history?
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Clever. How do you map the story arcs? Excellent concept.