page_title: Striptease
section_title: Paris
hierarchical_section_title: Striptease / Modern / Paris
caption_attribution_description: Mata Hari
context_page_description: Striptease is an entertainment, by females usually, before an audience. It is often included in the theatre form called burlesque. With music and dance, the stripper gradually removes her clothing. It is a very ancient dance form, and occurs in many societies.
  Stripping is done in a teasing manner, but without being obscene. While hiding certain parts of the body with hands or pieces of clothing, stripper dances around. Sometimes, plays are arranged, the strippers are disguised as Arabic dancers, Salome, Lolita or other well-known people. The spectator sometimes identifies with the stripper. Erotic dreams and exhibitionist fantasies may be projected into the striptease.
context_section_description: In the 1880s and 1890s, Parisian shows such as the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère had attractive scantily-clad women dancing and tableaux vivants (static poses). Acts in the 1890s had a woman slowly removed clothes in a vain search for a flea crawling on her body. The People's Almanac credits this as the origin of modern striptease.
  Starting in 1905, Mata Hari entered the scene. On the invitation of Emile Guimet she danced before a carefully chosen audience. The scene at the end of the show, where she was naked was a sensation. Similar performances, at the requests of Baron von Rothschild, Cécile Sorel, Gaston Menier and Natalie Clifford Barney followed. Mata Hari had never learned how to dance, and had never studied Indian and oriental dancing. Her dances were a product of her imagination. In 1917, Mata Hari was charged with espionage and sentenced to death. She was shot, on 15 October 1917, in Vincennes, near Paris.
  Another landmark performance was the appearance at the Moulin Rouge in 1907 of an actress called Germaine Aymos who entered dressed only in three very small shells. In the 1930s the famous Josephine Baker danced semi-nude in the danse sauvage at the Folies and other such performances were provided at the Tabarin. These shows were notable for their sophisticated choreography and often dressing the girls in glitzy sequins and feathers. By the 1960s "fully nude" shows were provided at such places as Le Crazy Horse Saloon.
caption: Mata Hari. The most celebrated segment of her stage act was the progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jewelled bra and some ornaments over her arms and head
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