Little Egypt was the stage name for at least three popular belly dancers from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. With countless imitators, the name became synonymous with belly dancers.
Fahreda Mazar Spyropoulos, (c. 1871 – April 5, 1937),[1] also performing under the stage name Fatima, had her start at the Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881. In the reopened saloon's lobby hangs a larger-than-life sized painting she donated entitled "Fatima". It bears six patched bullet holes; one can be seen above the belly button and a knife gash in the canvas below the knee.
In 1893, Spyropoulos went to Chicago to appear at the World's Columbian Exposition. Raqs dancers performed for the first time in the United States at the Egyptian Theater on the fair's Midway. Sol Bloom presented the show "The Algerian Dancers of Morocco" at the attraction "A Street in Cairo" produced by Gaston Akoun, which included Spyropoulos, though she was neither Egyptian nor Algerian, but Syrian. The melody that accompanied her dance became famous as the Snake Charmer song. Spyropoulos, the wife of a Chicago restaurateur 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.[citation needed]
Spyropoulos gained wide attention, 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 "belly dance" 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.
Some time after Spyropoulos went to Europe, she performed under the stage name "Little Egypt."[citation needed]
Subsequently, several female dancers adopted the name Little Egypt and toured the United States performing some variation of this dance, until the name became somewhat synonymous with exotic dancers, and was often associated with the Dance of the Seven Veils. Spyropoulos then claimed to be original Little Egypt from the Chicago Fair. Recognized as the true Little Egypt,[citation needed] she disliked being confused with Ashea Wabe, after Wabe's performance at the Seeley banquet in 1896 ended up in her arrest and a full-scale New York City scandal.
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 for her consent.[2]
Montreal-born Ashea Wabe (1871 – January 3, 1908) became front-page news in 1896 after she danced at the swank Fifth Avenue bachelor party for Herbert Seeley.[3] A rival promoter reported that Wabe planned to dance nude and the party was raided by the vice squad. Though the raid precluded 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 having no clothes on. Theodore Roosevelt, then a New York City Police Commissioner, supported the police captain who conducted the raid and was subsequently vilified by the city media for interfering with a party held by upstanding gentlemen. Only later was it revealed that 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.[citation needed]
The raid brought some amount of fame to Wabe. In fact, 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,[4] by her sister, having most likely died from gas asphyxiation. She was said to have left an estate of over $200,000.[5]
Fatima Djemille (? – March 14, 1921) appeared at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.[6]
Fatima was the subject of two early films, Edison's Coochee Coochee Dance (1896) and Fatima (1897).[citation needed]
Lorraine Shalhoub (born December 20, 1931, in Brooklyn) used the name Little Egypt for her acting career.[7]
Loving Little Egypt is the title of a Thomas McMahon novel, set in the late 19th century.
