It Started As a Perfectly Innocent Dance Teaching System...Then It Spawned

What exactly IS The System in the Alchemist’s Lab?

…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 vs. 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.¹ 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!!!!”

✨ cue god-rays and angelic choir ✨

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.)

Additionally, for me Colorado meant severe allergies and altitude which, after my big car wreck in 2000, also meant asthma. My doctors were uncertain 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…²

All of that fused into one great, lotus-blooming pond of soul-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 lotuses in bloom at Orchard Park, Bentonville, AR

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. So it’s not a wildebeest…it’s not a hartebeest. It’s the HarteBeast. Badum-tsss.

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.

5 Elements with their Domains and Realms. Begin at Earth…rinse-repeat.

I don’t mind if you screenshot these things for your own reference, or even if you share them with others. Just please link back here and properly attribute their creator: my dance name, 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 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:

Yes. This is the simplified version.

PLEASE DON’T FEEL OVERWHELMED. THAT’S WHY I GAVE IT ITS OWN STACK.

This is just a quick overview to show you the kind of stuff we’ll be diving into. Deciphering that graph, Element by Element, satellite by satellite, is one of the main reasons why I didn’t just put all this stuff into its own Section alongside my fiction and memoirs.

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 each position in the Elements through the newsletter posts and the fun little tools, toys and tidbits I will be posting in Notes.

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!³

UP NEXT: How to begin deciphering that solar system circle graph so you can use it in your own personal way:

Or how I draw circles and infinities with my body as a means by which to heal - you can find that over on my other publication, Bella & the Beast. Be warned, that publication can get NSFW. That’s why some of this stuff is over there, instead of here:

Dance: A Transformational Superpower

© 2023 Hartebeast

1. 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 the home I’m building for all my NSFW stuff, including some of my steamy, gory fiction. MUAhahaha…

2. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR

3. Lindsey Stirling on YouTube