DanceStory: Origins & Evolution

Origins, evolution & updates about my dance adventures

Since my old website is no longer active, let’s begin with the questions most frequently asked about my dancing. In case you’re not aware, belly dancers often perform under stage names. Mine used to be Nadhra, but due to Traumatic Brain Injury, she is like a post-car-wreck ghost who haunts my body.

Now I dance under the name Isidora. (a.k.a. Izzy. Iz. Isadorable. Isadorkable…) This name was bestowed upon me by two of my closest dance sisters. It means “the gift of Isis.”

Hey, Izzy! Do you still perform? 

I do! Just rarely onstage or live anymore. Stage lights, travel, jet lag, crowded auditoriums, big events - all these melt my already scrambled brains,¹ so I don't really do it anymore. Now I mostly create dance performances for video. You can find them all on my original IzzyDancer YouTube, or on the currently active Bella & the Beast Channel, which also has some of my instructional material and vloggy entries.

Or this playlist is the one-stop hub of my performance videos from both channels:

I really miss your old dancing, Iz. 🤨

Yeah. You and me, both.

The practical reasons include the number of injuries I’ve sustained from a drunk driver, domestic assaults, another rear-ending from a dude not paying attention at a stop sign, and a fall down my stairs because my stuff doesn’t work right anymore.

Trauma-induced scoliosis, spinal degeneration, and a torn meniscus are hell on belly dance isolations, shimmies, footwork and floorwork.

Memory and sequencing issues from TBI are hell on my ability to memorize intricate music, create choreographies that can do them justice, and then get the correct moves out in the correct timing to the music. All this has had astronomical impact on why my dance style sometimes goes through dramatic changes.

Because I’ve gone through dramatic changes.

Seriously, why don't you just belly dance anymore?

Wellllll…did I ever really “just belly dance?” That's up for debate. I have studied so many different forms of movement from around the world in dance, martial arts, fitness, expression, and wellness, and I've loved every single style. They all blend together when I start creating, and that's the way I prefer it. It is my essence.

Dichotomy
Variety.
Opposition.
Balance.

Since I'm an innovator, not a traditional preservationist, and since martial arts and storytelling are as equally important to me as dance, I have shifted into a form whose thematic imagery is not cultural, but universal to this planet.

We all need air, water, nutrient-rich earth and the things that grow up out of it, heat and light. We all need protection—from the elements, from dis-ease, and from all that would seek to harm us. (And by "we" I don't only mean humans…ahem.)

Belly dance is an integral part of what I do. I couldn't ever extract its influences from my dancing to save my life.

But I've never been ONLY a belly dancer. 

Okay, so what style DO you dance now?

Mine. 😜 It is the more comprehensive evolution of my old Tejedora Style.

This vlogging playlist has my video entries about this evolution and the Elemental System it spawned, my transition from stage to video, injury recovery, art & nature inspiration, and other stuff that blows my hair back. This playlist also has my “What Can I Do When I Can’t Dance?” series that I filmed after re-tearing my meniscus so badly that I couldn’t walk on it:

As for the dance style itself, I call it the Dance of Elemental Alchemyⓒ, inspired by my System of 5 Natural Elements. This is my personalized blend of the various Eastern and Western elemental philosophies I’ve studied and played with:

1. EARTH and the things that grow up out of it

2. AIR and the complete lack thereof (Space, Void, etc.)

3. FIRE

4. WATER

5. METAL

6. ALCHEMY - the fusion of all 5.

If you’ve missed all the earlier posts detailing this style, here it is at a glance:

This style’s purpose is not to focus on the fusion of cultural or traditional dance forms. Rather, it explores personal expression through movement, inspired by the building blocks that make up our planet and Universe, and those that make up ourselves:

1. Body

2. Spirit (soul, chi, life force, energy, etc.)

3. Heart

4. Mind

5. Persona

This is a storytelling form, from a tale as simple as, "This is how this music makes me feel right now," to a full-blown, full-cast, full-length ballet. As such, characters, creatures, costumes, setting, and plotline are vital elements we explore. So are musicality, body language, emotional expression, communication, and the mindsets conducive to both artistic creation and the protection of our artistic babies so they can grow up into artistic Badasses.

How long ago/how did you get started dancing?

The long and geekily intensive story will be gradually migrated from my old blog to this DanceStory Section HERE. If you’d like to receive updates when I load those:

Short story:  

I have been obsessed with dancing pretty much since I could walk. In high school, I substituted cheerleading for my wish that I could study dance officially. I had to wait until college for that, where I started out in Theater and Dance. Along the way, I switched to History and Dance.

During my freshman year in 1992, I also discovered belly dance while sitting on the theater stairs, waiting to rehearse onstage with a gal who performed at the local Greek restaurant. She suggested that, because I had so easily caught onto the Polynesian dance we were learning, I should take belly dancing, and then take her spot at the restaurant once she graduated and moved away. 

Over the next six months, the Muse kept bwonging me on the head until I finally said, "All right, already! I'll take belly dance! Sheesh!" And so I did. And the rest is history. (And dance.) 

Many dances, in fact. 

Also during college, medieval reenactment introduced me to the full gamut of this art form beyond just the shiny, sparkly cabaret style. Then martial arts got in there and mucked everything up in the most glorious way. 🤣😈🤣

So what types of dance HAVE you studied?

Hooo boy. *rolling up sleeves, preparatory inhalation*

• Cheerleading & American pop-culture shtuff

• Ballet, Modern, Jazz, Tap

• Ballroom, Latin, Square, Swing, Salsa

• Ecstatic, Expressionist & Spontaneous Dance

• Various American Cabaret belly dance styles

• ATS, Dunyavi, Gothic, and other Tribal & Fusion belly dance styles

• Hahbi'Ru and other Renaissance Festival & SCA folksy styles

• Turkish Oryantale and Romany

• Ghawazee, Guedra, Saidi, Tunisian, Egyptian Folkloric

• Flamenco & Mexican Folklorico

• Irish & Scottish

• Bollywood & Odissi

• Polynesian, Hula, Tahitian

• Dance of the Kama Sutra

• Sensual Flow & Flow Yoga

Props & such:

• Sword & double-sword

• Veil, double veil, multi-veil

• And yes, I sometimes do the Dance of 7 Veils, but that deserves several posts unto itself.

• Fans & Fanveils

• Isis wings, sleeve-wings, faerie wings

• Skirt dance

• Cane & double-cane

• Candles & oil lamps (or their LED equivalent, depending on the theater)

• Tambourine

• Finger cymbals & castanettes

• A variety of tippity-tappity type shoes

• Pompoms, flags, ribbons, baton

• The one time I danced with a snake, he was fake. Apparently, Fang and I moved so convincingly together that it freaked out a few people in the front row. MUAhahaha…

• I also have been known to pick up any of my martial arts weapons and dance with them. This includes daggers, staff, axe, and my non-dance swords. I’d really like to figure out how to dance with my morningstar flail mace but…whoof. That sucker is a beast. I’ll take my arm right out of its socket trying to wield that! Or, you know. Clonk myself in the noggin…shoot my eye out... (You’ll shoot your eye out! You’ll shoot your eye out!)

• I am also notorious for flinging long, fuzzy cat tails around in the way one would twirl a cane. Wut. Cane…cat…? C’mon!

• Oh. And I once opened a dance while eating grapes.

Other stuff that infiltrates my dancing:

• Dance Theater

• Storytelling & Character Creation

• Smartassery

• Martial Arts²

What's your favorite style?

🤣🤣🤣 Maaaannn...I'm a Sagittarius. I don't really do favorites. Like...with much of anything. 

Do you still teach? I want to study with you!

Yup! But only privately. If you subscribe to this publication, it’ll let you email me about that.

Below is the video playlist I made for my Dance of Elemental Alchemy and the Hartebeast System®. There you can find instructional videos, Elements System stuff, and elements-specific performances.

This first video is a brainstorming experiment from when I was working with Vocational Rehabilitation to put together an online school. Fortuitously, this process included a new neuropsychological exam that I’d been trying to get since 2014 after my fourth brain trauma. (There have been 6 total.)

Unfortunately, it would show us why everything I’ve tried to build since 2012 keeps collapsing. Building any kind of business is not an option for me unless I have some serious supports in place to help bridge the gap between my arts and my disabilities.

I’m still searching for those.

• Marketing

• Videography

• Social media

• Scheduling

• Finance

• Communication, etc.

In other words, the business aspects of transforming my arts into an online business. Alas, Voc Rehab wouldn’t award me a small business grant to help pay for the supports I need to get my business off the ground unless I had those supports in place from a 49% business partner. In other words, from somebody donating all those supports to me for free until we start to make money so that I’d be reliable enough to get a grant for the supports I need…?

Ummm…

Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to me either.

But then Covid happened and obliterated everything I’d been building anyway.

Hence one of the biggest reasons why I’ve been creating this Tinkerings publication on Substack—because they don’t charge me for their services up front. They take payment out the back end whenever I get paid. In this way, I’m hoping to finally share all this stuff in a medium that doesn’t mess up my neurology or destroy my spine, hands, and wrists the way that intensive video editing does.

Here is the vision I keep trying to put into words over the past decade:

Elements System posts on Substack live in this Section HERE.

Substack Housekeeping: You can opt in or out of notifications for any Section at any time. Just go to your Subscriptions on the desktop view and adjust what you want. That includes all these posts in the DanceStory Section, and my super-geek-out Hyperfixator’s Haven as well as The System.

Hey, Izzy, will you come dance for my birthday/wedding/bachelor party/private entertainment?

Birthday, wedding, anniversary: Maybe. But not while I can’t drive and I’m in the middle of a neurological dookie-storm undergoing a gazillion tests.

Bachelor Partay: No. I assure you, I won't be nearly as fun as you think I will be.

Private Entertainment: Well, I dunno. Are we currently dating? No? Then you're funny. Yes? Game on. 

Hey, Isadorable, yer real hawt. Are ya married? Got a boyfriend? Can I ask you out?

NOPE. But I am eternally in the market for awesome friends.

Are ya sure? Are ya really-really sure?

YARP. 

Izzy, why do you love dance so much?

Easier if I just show you. This was a piece my students and friends helped me make as an entry for an international project called Pangea Day in 2008.³

© 2020 Hartebeast

1. How my brains originally got scrambled. Be warned! This post will take you to my NSFW memoir publication, Bella & the Beast. In leaving these safer Tinkerings waters, there be Beasties over yonder!

My vlog entry about creating dances specifically for video when I could no longer create or memorize choreographies after brain traumas 2-6

2. I’ve also written about the types of martial arts that infiltrate my dancing over on Bella & the Beast:

DAMSEL TO DANGEROUS - which covers how I got started in martial arts by discovering medieval heavy armored combat at a place that also had belly dancing out in the elements

DAMSEL TO DANGEROUS 2 - which has the bullet point list of all the other martial styles I’ve studied

3. Pangea Day