Remembering "Little Egypt"

FIRST, you HAVE to check out this old film clip now on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxZoXJBILbc

If you think Miley Cyrus has caused a sensation now, imagine what the staid Victorians back then thought when Little Egypt danced

The Chicago Tribune was disgusted by this "vulgar display" and one Canadian doctor I remember reading about expressed his contempt for the way this woman" moved her pelvic and lumbar regions" in a terrible manner...

Even more now from Wikpedia 

Little Egypt (dancer)

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For other uses, see Little Egypt (disambiguation).

Ashea Wabe is seen here as Little Egypt, in one of a series of photos by Benjamin Falk.

 

Little Egypt was the stage name for three popular belly dancers. They had so many imitators, the name became synonymous with belly dancers generally.

Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, (c. 1871, Syria - April 5, 1937, Chicago, Illinois),^[1] also performing under the stage name Fatima, appeared at the "Street in Cairo" exhibition on the Midway at the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. In 1898 Mark Twain had a near fatal heart attack watching Farida go through her paces.^[2]

Ashea Wabe (born Catherine Devine (1871, Montreal, Canada - January 3, 1908, New York City)^[3] danced at the Seeley banquet in New York in 1896, enjoying a fleeting succès de scandale.

Fatima Djemille (died March 14, 1921) appeared at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.^[4]

Contents

• 1 Farida Mazar Spyropoulos
• 2 Ashea Wabe
• 3 Fatima Djamile
• 4 Legacy
  • 4.1 Legacy in film
  • 4.2 Legacy in music
  • 4.3 Legacy in literature
• 5 See also
• 6 References
• 7 External links

Farida Mazar Spyropoulos

In 1893, at the Egyptian Theater on the World's Columbian Exposition Midway in Chicago, Raqs dancers performed for the first time in the United States. Sol Bloom presented a show titled "The Algerian Dancers of Morocco" at the attraction called "A Street in Cairo" produced by Gaston Akoun, which included Spyropoulos, though she was neither Egyptian nor Algerian, but Syrian. Spyropoulos, the wife of a Chicago restauranteur and businessman who was a native of Greece, was billed as Fatima, but because of her size, she had been called "Little Egypt" as a backstage nickname.
Spyropoulos stole the show, and popularized this form of dancing, which came to be referred to as the "Hoochee-Coochee", or the "shimmy and shake". At that time the word "bellydance" had not yet entered the American vocabulary, as Spyropoulos was the first in the U.S. to demonstrate the "danse du ventre" (literally "dance of the belly") first seen by the French during Napoleon's incursions into Egypt at the end of the 18th century. Today the word "hootchy-kootchy" generally means an erotic suggestive dance and is often erroneously conflated with the group of dances originating in the Middle East that we now call bellydance.

Subsequently, several women dancers adopted the name of Little Egypt and toured the United States performing some variation of this dance, until the name became somewhat synonymous with exotic dancers, and often associated with the Dance of the Seven Veils. Spyropoulos then claimed to be the original Little Egypt from the Chicago Fair. Recognized as the true Little Egypt, she always disliked being confused with Ashea Wabe, after Wabe's performance at the Seeley banquet.

Spyropoulos danced as Little Egypt at the 1933 Century of Progress in Chicago at the age of 62.
At the time of her death, she had filed suit against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the use of her name in the motion picture The Great Ziegfeld, claiming that the producers of the movie failed to ask her consent.^[5]

Ashea Wabe

Ashea Wabe became front-page news item in 1896 after she danced at a swank Fifth Avenue bachelor party for Herbert Seeley. A rival promoter reported that Wabe was going to dance nude and the party was raided by the vice squad. Though the raid precluded Ms. Wabe from completing her "act," she nonetheless admitted to local authorities that she had been paid to dance and pose "in the all-together," a euphemism for sans clothing. Theodore Roosevelt, then a New York City Police Commissioner, supported the police captain who conducted the raid and who was subsequently vilified by the city media for interfering with a party held by upstanding gentlemen. Only later did the story come out that Ms. Wabe (a.k.a. Little India) had every intention of performing in the nude and would have done so had the police raid not occurred.
The raid brought some amount of fame to Wabe. She was hired by Broadway impresario Oscar Hammerstein I to appear as herself in a humorous parody of the Seeley dinner. She might have then been forgotten except for a series of photographs taken by Benjamin Falk.
On January 5, 1908, she was found dead in her apartment at 236 West 37th Street, New York City, by her sister, having apparently died from gas asphyxiation. She was said to have left an estate of over $200,000.^[6]

Fatima Djamile

Fatima was the subject of two early films, Edison's Coochee Coochee Dance (1896) and Fatima (1897).^{[citation needed]}

Legacy

Legacy in film

• The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company released three short reels in 1897 with a dancer billed as Little Egypt.

• Little Egypt is a highly fictionalized 1951 film about the legendary World's Fair dancer, produced by Universal International, and starring Rhonda Fleming in the title role.

Legacy in music

• Rock and Roll tunesmiths Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller penned a song entitled "Little Egypt" that was a 1961 hit for The Coasters. In the song, Little Egypt is depicted as a burlesque dancer/stripper, wearing "nuttin' but a button and a bow".

• Elvis Presley performed the Leiber and Stoller song in his 1964 film Roustabout, and included it in his legendary 1968 TV special Elvis.

• Ray Wylie Hubbard mentions both Tempest Storm and Little Egypt in the title track of his album Snake Farm when discussing the singer's girlfriend Ramona who works at a reptile house.

Well a woman I love is named Ramona

She kinda looks like Tempest Storm

And she can dance like Little Egypt

She works down at the snake farm

• Hank Williams Jr. mentions Little Egypt in his song "Naked Women and Beer".

• Nathan Cavaleri performed a cover of Little Egypt with Chris Bailey in 1992.

Legacy in literature

Loving Little Egypt is the title of a Thomas McMahon novel, set in the late 19th century.

See also

Dance portal

• "The Streets of Cairo, or the Poor Little Country Maid"

References

1. Jump up ^ "Chicagoans Pay Silent Tribute to 'Little Egypt,'" Rockford (Ill.) Morning Star, April 9, 1937, 3
2. Jump up ^ The Love Goddesses(1965) documentary; Janus Films
3. Jump up ^
4. Jump up ^ TheOscarSite.com deaths for 1921: Fatima Djemille
5. Jump up ^ "Little Egypt--Remember? In Defense of Wriggles", Omaha World-Herald, April 4, 1936, 4
6. Jump up ^ "'Little Egypt' Dead; Coroner Suspicious in Death of Seeley Dinner Dancer," Baltimore Sun, January 6, 1908, 9; "The Fatal Curse of the Wicked Seeley Dinner. 'Little Egypt's' Shocking Death Only Latest Tragedy in The Long Record of Disasters That Keeps On Following The Feasters at The Revel." New Orleans Item, January 26, 1908, 40

• Carlton, Donna (June 1995). Looking for Little Egypt. International Dance Discovery. ISBN 978-0-9623998-1-7.

• Kennedy, Charles A; Saffle, Michael, editor (1998). "When Cairo Met Main Street: Little Egypt, Salome Dancers, and the World's Fairs of 1893 and 1904". Music and culture in America, 1861-1918. Garland reference library of the humanities. New York: Garland. pp. 271–298. ISBN 0815321252.

External links

• Little Egypt (1897) reel one at the Internet Movie Database
• Little Egypt (1897) reel two at the Internet Movie Database
• Little Egypt (1897) reel three at the Internet Movie Database
• Falk Papers at the New York Public Library's Research Libraries Online Catalog