Little Egypt (dancer)

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.

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.

[Chicago Tribune, February 2nd, 1983][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 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.

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.

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.