Little Egypt

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 two popular belly dancers. They had so many imitators, the name became synonymous with belly dancers generally.

Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, (c. 1871, date of death unknown), 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.

Ashea Wabe danced at the Seeley banquet in New York in 1896, enjoying a fleeting succès de scandale.

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 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 eighteenth 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.

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 dancer falsely reported that Wabe was going to dance nude and the party was raided by the vice squad.

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.

Legacy

Legacy in film

• The American Mutoscope 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 Lieber 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".

See also

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

References

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
• Donna Carlton's Little Egypt page
• Falk Papers at the New York Public Library's Research Libraries Online Catalog

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