How can I theme non material elements using angular material's theming or $mdthemingprovider?

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CSS

AngularJs

Angular Material wants you to use classes like md-Primary to set a component's theme, however these classes only seem to work on native Angular Material elements such as md-Button, etc.

So a table or a simple span for instance, which have no Angular Material equivalent can't be styled using the angular material theming? this doesn't seem right.

What am I missing?

What I have tried:

I have tried adding the intention classes such as md-Primary to non-angular-material elements and they do not seem to have any effect.