Little Egypt, originally uploaded by thegypsykiss.com.

Who – or what – was Little Egypt? Farida Mazar Spyropoulos was an exotic dancer back in the late 1800s, who took the country by storm after scandalizing Chicago’s 1893 World Columbian Exposition Midway. At the Egyptian Theater there, she started the dance known as the “hootchy-kootchy”, and now that phrase tends to mean any suggestive dance. What a woman! Known for that after over a hundred years!

She was billed as “Fatima”, but she was so diminutive, her nickname was “Little Egypt”, and it stuck. Several women then stole her thunder, billing themselves also as Little Egypt while on tour. Included in that number is Ashea Wabe, who is the subject of the above photograph.

Sol Bloom was the one who put on Farida’s original show at the Expo. He was a showman (and later a Congressman – go figure). He also was the man who labeled her Raqs Sharqi dance as ‘belly dance’, probably in an effort to get more curious oglers into the show. He purportedly wrote that old song we all sang as kids, “There’s a place in France, where the naked ladies dance…”

Obviously, all this semi-scandalous behavior eroded the meaning of raqs sharqi, from the Danse Orientale to the shimmy and shake hoochy koochy. There wasn’t really any desire to separate exotic from erotic dancing in the way we attempt it today. From what I can gather, most of the “Little Egypts” didn’t strip – but the idea of the dance being tawdry stuck.

This is a shame, because despite the adorably naughty story above, the dance form as we know it also has majesty, joy, and wholesomeness. But, we’ll keep on working to create a more accurate understanding of what belly dance really is.

And by the way, I especially like her little hat. For performance headdresses, take a peek here: The Gypsy Kiss Handmade Headdresses – created by moi!

Tags: belly dance, bellydance, Fatima, headdress, headdresses, history, hoochy koochy, Little Egypt, Orientale, raqs, Sol Bloom, tribal fusion